Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The emergence of digital content has disrupted industries and institutions that have enjoyed relatively stable practices, policies, and businesses for decades. News organizations, record companies, broadcast and movie producers, and book publishers have all been dramatically affected by the change. So have libraries. Interest in e-books took off in late 2006 with the release of […]
Our December 2011 survey showed that 58% of Americans ages 16 and older said they had a library card. Women, whites, and parents of minor children are more likely to have library cards than other groups, and having a library card is also strongly correlated with educational attainment: 39% of those who have not completed […]
We asked respondents if they had used the library in the past year for a variety of purposes, including research, book-borrowing, and periodicals like newspapers and magazines. Some 56% of those ages 16 and older said that they had used a public library at least once in the past year for one of the activities […]
12% of e-book readers have borrowed an e-book from a library. Those who use libraries are pretty heavy readers, but most are not aware they can borrow e-books.
How patrons’ book-borrowing habits are changing The findings reported in this chapter come entirely from the online canvassings of patrons and librarians. The patron respondents in our opt-in sample were frequent visitors of both their library’s physical branch and website. They use their library’s website regularly to reserve books and download e-books, while physical branches […]
Overview of responses in our online panel Our online panel, unsurprisingly, was a relatively tech savvy group. The vast majority of library patron respondents owned a desktop or laptop computer, as well as a cell phone. Over half owned an e-reader, and about half owned a tablet computer—far higher than the 19% of the general […]
How patron’s reading habits have changed since reading and borrowing e-books. While some of the respondents to our online queries of patrons said that their reading habits had not changed, many said that they are indeed doing more “impulse” reading since the advent of e-books due to the ease of obtaining and reading books wherever […]
As part of our exploration of the new ecosystem of books, we asked respondents in our December 2011 survey about the way they discover books and then obtain them. We found that personal recommendations dominate book recommendations. At the same time, logarithms on websites, bookstore staffers, and librarians are in the picture, too. In our […]
About Pew Internet The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is an initiative of the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping America and the world. The Pew Internet Project explores the impact of the internet on children, families, communities, the work place, […]
About Pew Internet The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is an initiative of the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping America and the world. The Pew Internet Project explores the impact of the internet on children, families, communities, the work place, […]