The Value of Public Libraries in America

April 10, 2014 – Katie Greenock, SSP Communications Committee – The Pew Research Internet Project recently reported that 30% of Americans are highly engaged with public libraries in their communities, and that number increases to 69% when either a high or medium level of engagement is reported. (For the purposes of this study, high engagement is defined both by frequency of use, which is at least once per year, and in perceived value of the role of libraries in society.)

What’s more, the use of libraries is positively linked to patrons with greater access to economic and cultural resources, defying conventional wisdom that library resources are most useful to those who are unable to pay for similar resources or services in a consumer marketplace.

The report states that, “contrary to the idea that the internet is replacing the need for libraries in people’s lives, these high engagement groups also report some of the highest rates of technology use in our sample.”

The survey report, entitled “From Distant Admirers to Library Lovers—and Beyond: A Typology of Public Library Engagement in America,” also categorizes library users into distinct groups in the style of a typology, or “a statistical analysis that clusters individuals into groups based on certain attributes.” In the case of this study, the attributes are based on the levels of library engagement.

Publishers Weekly reports that Pew’s most recent installment is related to earlier research reports on the perceived utility of public libraries in a society increasingly dependent on and welcoming of digital sources of information. This report and the December 2013 report entitled “How Americans Value Public Libraries in Their Communities” focus more specifically on how library patrons identify themselves (and are in turn identified) by their relationship with library use and resources.

The typology report also reveals an important statistic about information overload, a topic of relevance to both librarians and publishing professionals: those with the highest levels of library engagement and internet and smartphone use are least likely to experience this, and, in fact, only 18% of Americans reported this problem.

The importance of the Pew survey report for both the publishing and information sciences communities lies in its direct challenge to commonly accepted perceptions that digital access to information invalidates the role of the library and the need to cut back on information availability and proliferation due to an overabundance of this resource. Most significantly, the report elucidates the correlation of access to library resources across all demographics of American society as a predictor of community engagement.