Read the detailed writeup here: https://rpubs.com/yenlinchen7/920546

Introduction

The library catalogue provides classification of the content of the book, but unfortunately very little information is recorded about the books’ physical material, design elements, and quantitative characters (e.g. word length of articles). These data are especially important to the Publications department, who could benefit from observing trends in the industry regarding art books. This project is thus a quantitative study of the materiality and content of the art books awarded by the New York Times.

This expanded dataset is initially built to respond to these queries, which would help address publication concerns, but it could also serves as:

  1. Reference for the publications department, e.g. to obtain physical samples of certain materials, to facilitate decision for length of article, to observe trends in printed art book

  2. Reference for designers, e.g. to browse through how different designs look on print, to gain inspiration on layout

  3. Reference for curators, e.g. to research how existing exhibitions had organized their sections, or how many objects were selected for a show

NYT 2021 list: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/arts/design/best-art-books.html

This analysis is performed through R.

1. What subjects are these books about?

Based on the Clark library’s call number, categorized here https://clarkartkentico.blob.core.windows.net/clarkart-kentico-media-prod/clarkart/media/library/library-maps.pdf

nyt21$call_no
##  [1] "N6494 A2 P365 2021 E"   "N6520 R53 2021"         "NB237 J6445 C45 2021 " 
##  [4] "NF237 G5925 G6"         "ND603 T73 C45 2021"     "ND259 K33 C66"         
##  [7] "ND853 T3 B37 2021\n"    "ND237 R686 A75 2021 "   "ND955 P63 R67 H3 2020 "
## [10] "ND237 L43 G74 2021\n"   "N5298 T684 2021 E "     "NA1559 K853 J64 "      
## [13] "ND553 D81 L4 E 2021"    "N6847 C57 2021 "        "NA2542 A72 A682"       
## [16] "ND237 S4398 N48 2021"   "NF237 W243 B37 2021 "   "NE2687 J687\n"         
## [19] "NA2543 R37 N48 2021"

2. What “genre” do the books belong to?

3. How many articles are usually included in an exhibition catalogue?

index_catalogue <- grep("exhibition_catalogue",nyt21$book_genre)
article_count_catalog <- nyt21[index_catalogue,]$article_count
sort(article_count_catalog)
##  [1]  2  4  4  5  6  9  9 11 14 14 16 24 29

4. What is the distribution of coated/uncoated paper?

## coating count
sort(table(nyt21$paper_coating), decreasing = TRUE)
## 
##  coated_matte      uncoated           mix coated_glossy 
##            10             5             3             1

5. Does a book’s binding correlate with its price?

Distribution of binding style:

sort(table(nyt21$cover_bind), decreasing = TRUE)
## 
##  hardcover flexibound  softcover 
##         13          4          2

Distribution of price:

boxplot(nyt21$retail_price, horizontal = T, col="white", main="Distribution of Price ($)")
text(x=fivenum(nyt21$retail_price),labels=fivenum(nyt21$retail_price),y=1.25,cex=0.7)
stripchart(nyt21$retail_price,method = "stack",pch = 19,col = "brown",add = TRUE)

Comparing the price across the three binding styles:

6. Are timeline and index usually included?

par(mfrow=c(1,2))  
pie(table(nyt21$timeline), main="Timeline", col=c("white","lightblue"))
pie(table(nyt21$index),main="Index", col=c("white","brown"))

7. Where are the books printed and published?

Country of publisher:

##   country_alpha2        Country freq Latitude..average. Longitude..average.
## 5             US  United States    8            38.0000            -97.0000
## 2             DE        Germany    4            51.0000              9.0000
## 1             CH    Switzerland    3            47.0000              8.0000
## 3             GB United Kingdom    3            54.0000             -2.0000
## 4             IT          Italy    1            42.8333             12.8333

Country of printer:

##    country_alpha2       Country freq Latitude..average. Longitude..average.
## 6              IT         Italy    5            42.8333             12.8333
## 4              DE       Germany    3            51.0000              9.0000
## 3              CN         China    2            35.0000            105.0000
## 7              NL   Netherlands    2            52.5000              5.7500
## 10             US United States    2            38.0000            -97.0000
## 1              BE       Belgium    1            50.8333              4.0000
## 2              CH   Switzerland    1            47.0000              8.0000
## 5              ES         Spain    1            40.0000             -4.0000
## 8              SI      Slovenia    1            46.0000             15.0000
## 9              TR        Turkey    1            39.0000             35.0000

Country of Publisher & Printer, with Radius Corresponding to Count