About

The Seattle Public Library (SPL) publishes anonymized, open-access checkout data for every item in its collection, dating from 2005 to the present. To our knowledge, it is the only U.S. library to release checkout data by title with this level of temporal detail.

One dataset records exact timestamps for print book checkouts, while another provides monthly aggregates across all formats (e.g., ebooks, audiobooks, print books). Because U.S. book sales data is largely inaccessible outside the publishing industry, SPL’s open checkout data offers a rare and valuable alternative.

This project explores what we can learn about readers, libraries, the city of Seattle, and the wider world through the books that people check out from their local libraries.