Over the years the Ector County Library has seen its budget shrinking. They are in need of some repairs that the Commissioners Court may not be willing to fund. It has been a hot topic over the past few weeks and the truth is I just don’t know anything about our library, what it needs or how many people visit it per year. I will be diving in to this very topic this week.
One of the things we always hear while campaigning for libraries is that nobody uses libraries anymore. But check out the data and you’ll see something completely different.
- Did you know that almost 100 million more people visit their libraries (1.3 billion) each year than see a movie at the theater (1.2 billion)?
|
- Did you know that 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 Nasar (4 million) combined?
|
- Did you know that 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?
|
- Did you know that more than 172 million Americans have library cards? That means that more than half of the American public has a library card right now.
|
- Did you know that librarians answer around 250 million questions from the public each year?
|
- Did you know that millennials use libraries more than any other generation?
|
- Did you know that 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.
|
