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Loughborough University's Library Systems Team investigated two potential uses for Raspberry Pis. The first use to be identified for investigation was using the Raspberry Pi as a replacement for the existing OPAC hardware. While it met a majority of the requirements there were issues with the responsiveness to user input at certain times. The second use for Raspberry Pis investigated was to provide a number of digital signs to display details about resource bookings and the availability of PCs in IT labs around campus. The Raspberry Pi demonstrated that it was ideally suited to this task.

Deciding which works should be held by a university library, and how many copies of each work are required, is a time consuming process. Library staff have to consider a number of variables in making each purchasing decision, and use data from a variety of library systems. At Loughborough University one such system is the online reading lists, which allows academic staff to indicate to students and library staff which books they feel are most useful/important. This paper discusses taking data from the reading list system, and other library data sources, and using it in an automated system to make book purchasing suggestions to ease this task for library staff.

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