And Yet You're Eliminating Libraries??. Interesting ILL Statistic
“A recent study published by OCLC reports the following statistics:
Libraries as logistics experts
U.S. libraries circulate 1,947,600,000 items a yearPublic libraries
1,772,000,000 Circulation (lent to patrons)
39,500,000 Interlibrary loan
1,811,500,000 Total (State library data 2001–2002)Academic libraries
122,000,000 Circulation
14,100,000 Interlibrary loan
136,100,000 Total (ACRL 2001)Libraries: How they stack up. OCLC Abstracts, 6 (37).
I'll do the math: 53,600,000 ILL items in 2001-2002.
No wonder we thought we were busy, we were!” [ILL News]
Like we said, “best value in town.” More stunning facts:
- “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.”
- “U.S. libraries circulate about the same number of items as FedEx ships 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.”
Make sure you have copies of this document to hand out to all of your patrons. Put these numbers on your web site. Include them in your newsletter. Autograph a copy and send it to your legislators. [The Shifted Librarian]