An Empirical Study of Long Tail in Public Libraries

The Long Tail Theory is regarded as the highly valued principle for business management and operation in today's well-developed Internet. The Long Tail concept is to gather a small number of diverse no-popular products to form a large profit. It is comparable to the profit of popular products with a large sales volume. Are there similar facts in the operation and management of libraries? When the library vigorously promotes popular books, are other collections fully utilized or ignored? The purpose of this study is to explore the possible long-tail phenomenon in the library. Then, based on the perspective of the library collection, we apply the data mining technique to further explore the possible facts. The results can be applied to improve and enhance the effectiveness of library management and marketing.