Molly's Project

I also hope to do something with the central branch library for my project. I would like to investigate the claim that Barbara made about the Central library being a "downtown destination." My plan is pick a day or two when there are big downtown events going on and an "average" day when there is nothing all that spectacular going on and compare the "reach" of central library circulation on those days. By reach, I mean people who have other libraries as their "home" libraries, but who checked materials out from the central library on that day - much like the map that Barbara showed us in class. I would also like to see how many people visited the museums by the library on those same days to see if there is any correlation, something that could give weight to the fact that the library is a downtown destination for people who could have checked out libraries from their local branches (or not?). My greatest concern in making this a feasible project is getting the data to correlate on such a local street level in order to make the maps. I am thinking that I will focus on Saturdays because those are days when most people do not work and could have the potential to travel to a library further away than their own local branch. The Saturdays I am considering choosing from are the Saturday during the 2004 Taste of Madison, the WI History Family Style day at the historical museum back in March, or the Saturday during last year's art fair on the square.