Month: December 2019

“…but, nobody uses libraries anymore!”

Amy Rogers News

You may have heard someone say “…but, nobody uses libraries anymore!”

EveryLibrary, a library advocate organization, hits back with numbers that tells a very different story:

  • Almost 100 million more people visit their libraries (1.3 billion) each year than see a movie at the theater (1.2 billion)
  • Libraries are visited over 1.3 billion times a year which is 10 times more than MLB (68 million), NFL (17 million), NBA (22 million), Hockey (21 million), and Nascar (4 million) combined?
  • 5 million more people attend just library programs than go to MLB (68 million), NFL (17 million), and NBA (22 million) games combined each year?
  • More than 172 million Americans have library cards. That means that more than half of the American public has a library card right now
  • Librarians answer around 250 million questions from the public each year
  • Millennials use libraries more than any other generation
  • Americans check out over 2.1 billion items from their public library every year. That’s an average of 16 items a year for every American or 32 items a year for every card holder.

The above statistics refer only to public libraries. These numbers don’t even include elementary, middle, or high school libraries and they don’t include data from Academic libraries on college and university campuses. They also don’t include data from private or membership libraries or corporate, legal, or other special libraries. That means that the statistics for all library usage in the United States is wildly under-reported and the actual statistics for library use are even greater than what we’re reporting here. 

If you don’t believe these stats, you can check them for yourself. All of the data on public library usage comes from the Annual Institute of Museum and Library Services report. This report includes data on the over 18,000 public libraries in the United States and the latest data is from 2017. You can find the data on professional sports attendance here and on movie theater attendance here. The data on millennial library use comes from the PEW report on libraries available here.

Libraries remain just as essential, if not more, in our lives.

Help us reach our goal for 2019!

Amy Rogers Donations

UPDATE 1/29/2020: We exceeded our end-of-year goal by raising $12,300! Thank you for your support!

Last November, the El Cerrito Library Foundation sent a letter to our community with an update on Foundation’s activities in 2019. To recap, we

  • celebrated the Library’s first full year of seven-day-per-week service that we advocated vigorously
  • funded a new refrigerator for the library to host a summer lunch program
  • established a permanent endowment fund to support vibrant programming at our library in perpetuity
  • represented our community at City Council meetings

In 2020, the Foundation will continue vital work to build support for a new library appropriate for the 21st century needs of El Cerrito. Your community support makes all of this possible.

In honor of our library’s 106th anniversary, we urged our community to make a year-end donation of at least $106 to our Foundation. To date, in response to this letter, we received $8,000. We hope to achieve our goal of $10,000 by December 31st. 
 
If you have not donated, yet, please do it now to help support our Library! Your donation will be much appreciated and acknowledged.

Please visit us at https://eclibraryfoundation.org/how-to-donate/ to make a tax-deductible contribution online via FirstGiving or send a check to an P.O. address listed on this page. Donations are deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Thank you!

We wish you all happy holidays!

Al, Amy, Gary, Grace, Heidi, Kateryn, Mark, Marlene, Michael, Tom P, Tom R,  and Tracey.