QUILLBLOG

Newsflash: Canadians still going to libraries

Despite the onslaught of entertainment options competing for our attention, apparently Canadians are still flocking to our public libraries, according to a feature in today’s Ottawa Citizen. The article suggests business is booming at Canada’s major public libraries due to factors ranging from the high price of buying books to the rise in Internet usage thanks to the popularity of social networking.

The piece offers some eye-opening stats:

Toronto boasts the busiest public library system per capita in the world, with 1.2 million cardholders and 28.9 million items in 40 languages circulating each year. In Regina, 3,180 people are on the waiting list for Fearless Fourteen, the newest offering from romance-turned-crime writer Janet Evanovich. Halifax public libraries have 240 readers on a waiting list for Kathy Reichs’ newest forensic mystery, which won’t even be published until the end of the summer. And in Ottawa, 667 people are waiting to get their hands on one of 77 copies of Sophie Kinsella’s Remember Me?

“Everyone thinks the Internet has been the death of the public libraries and exactly the opposite is true,” says Grant Kaiser, director of marketing and development for Calgary Public Library. “We see more and more and more readership every year.”

[...]

Patrons are visiting the library for more than just books, too. Videos and DVDs comprise four per cent of the Ottawa library’s collection of 2.3 million items, and waiting lists for popular titles are often as long as those for books: recent films Juno, No Country for Old Men and Michael Clayton have waiting lists [...] 800-strong.

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