Speaking Volumes

Here in Libraryland we hear a lot of silly things:  Libraries are dying or dead.  All libraries have are books, and no one wants books.  No one will read any more.  Soon everything will be electronic.  Any one can be a librarian.
 
Such ridiculous statements are used to cut funding, keep librarians from being thought of as having professional status and those of us in Libraryland viewed as annoying as we argue these points.
 
In reality?  Library use is increasing.  Libraries offer a lot more than books, but even books are still in demand and technology will continue, but that doesn’t mean everything else will go away. (We have perfectly good stoves and microwaves, but I bet most of you still have grills!)
 
OCLC, the Online Computer Library Center dedicated to furthering access to the world’s information, has just released an interesting study titled:  Libraries: How They Stack Up.
 
Drawn from this report,  consider this…
 

U.S. libraries circulate 1,947,600,000 items a year.

U.S. public library cardholders outnumber Amazon customers by almost 5 to 1.
 Each day, U.S. libraries circulate nearly 4 times more items than Amazon
handles.  This is about the same number of items as FedEx ships per day.
 
FedEx ships more than 5.3 million items per day. 
 
Five times more people visit U.S. public libraries each year than attend U.S. professional and college football, basketball, baseball and hockey games combined.
 
There are more librarians world wide than the populations of Austin, Tx, Baltimore, MD and North Dakota
 

To see this report or learn other interesting fact, come visit us at the library!