From the
American Library Association...here's some interesting statistics about academic and public libraries. Statistics in purple give you an idea of where Chadwick Library fits in with the rest of the country.
Academic Libraries- Academic librarians answer 72.8 million reference questions each year--almost twice the attendance at college football games.
Chadwick Librarians responded to 4800 reference questions last year. This is a 22% increase from the previous year.- College libraries receive less than two cents of every dollar spent on higher education.
Chadwick Library 1.96% (2006-2007 figure) of IWC college educational and general fund. We spent approximately $310 per student (2006-2007 budget figure).- If the cost of People magazine had risen as fast as academic library periodicals since 1990, its subscription would cost about $150 per year.
The average cost of our academic paper subscriptions has risen approximately 10% each year.
- The number of librarians per 1000 students enrolled in 2 and 4 year colleges and universities in the U.S. dropped from 2.4 in 2000 to less than .5 in 2004.
The number of Chadwick staff having direct interaction with students is .5 per 100 students. The number of librarians per student is .35 per 100 students.
Public Libraries- 63% of adults in the U.S. have public library cards.
A total of 711 people (students and faculty/staff) are registered Chadwick Library patrons.
Over 80% of our campus constituency is a registered patron at Chadwick Library.- Americans go to school, public, and academic libraries more often than they go to the movies.
Attendance at Chadwick Library has set two consecutive all time attendance records. During the 2007-2008 academic year, 81,171 people visited the library. Seven months saw record breaking attendance and October 2007 saw 10,898 people visit the library which is the all-time record attendance for one month.- There are more public libraries than McDonald's in the U.S.--a total of 16,549, including branches
- Americans check out an average of more than seven books a year.
At Chadwick Library, 98.7% of our registered patrons check out materials during the 2007-2008 academic year.- Americans spend nearly ten times as much money on home video games (9.9 billion) as they do on school library materials for their children (1 billion).
Excluding salaries and wages, Chadwick Library spends over 85% of the library budget on materials that directly focus on student academic needs.
