Statistics: Canadian Book Buyers and Their Relationship to Libraries

From BookNet Canada:

Voracious readers will often beg or borrow their books from anywhere possible—buy books in person or online, borrow from the library or steal from friends. As part of The Canadian Book Consumer we have the opportunity to drill down into topical questions and we’re interested in understanding more about how book buyers use the library. We look at the following questions:

• How many book buyers use the library?
• How frequently?
• How many loans are e-books compared to print books?
• What happens when a library doesn’t have a book available to patrons or there is a lengthy reserve list?

Here’s a sneak peek of some of our library data.
In the first quarter of 2012, 59.43% of book buyers claim to have visited the library within the last 12 months. Of those respondents, 19.4% visit the library, either in person or online, 2 to 3 times a month and 16.3% visited once a month.

A bit more sneak peek data and two charts in the complete blog post.

Filed under: Data Files, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users