Libraries are not like supermarkets!

Libraries are not like supermarkets! For most people doing the grocery shopping puts them somewhere on a continuum from doing a big shop once a week (low frequency high duration) to quickly picking up a few things every day (high frequency low duration). Your shopping week will consume this much time, and you choose to work out how you distribute that time based on personal preferences, family needs and work/lifestyle choices. [OK – I know it’s not quite like that, but this is the perception of someone who is not actually responsible for the weekly shop.]

Libraries are not like that. People who come to the library more frequently tend to stay for an hour or two, while those who come every 2 or 3 weeks are usually in the library for about half an hour. How do I know this? I have data.

Having recently administered a survey for a mid-sized municipal library service we were encouraged to dig into the data to find narratives to engage and enthuse staff (as a means of celebrating what they do and stimulating service improvement) and to advocate to Council (on the value and impact of its investment in libraries for the community). In this process – which was aided by the library having settled on a good set of survey questions and generated nearly 2,000 responses – we were able to create personas of different library users.

For starters, look at these three typical library users – each of which is well-known to anyone who works in a library.

The Regular reader is the staple of the library. Every few weeks (depending on the borrowing cycle) they come in, drop off their books, pick up some holds and browse the shelves to see if something catches their eye. 38% are in and out in 10 minutes, 86% are done within 30 minutes. They almost never spend more than an hour in the library. Average stay 17 minutes.

The Parent with child is also familiar. Story Time on a Wednesday or Tuesday morning. Some are there just for the 30-minute activity, others linger on for another 30 minutes or so to borrow books or chat to other parents as the kids play together. Average stay 45 minutes.

Your Tertiary student is a different proposition. During semester times they’ll be in at the library at least once a week, maybe  couple of times. And they’ll set themselves up in a quiet corner, laptop out, headphones on, and stay – for an hour or two or three. Average stay 76 minutes.

Each of these descriptors comes from the combination of a couple of survey questions:

• What library service have you used in the past 6 months?

• How often do you visit the library?

• On average, how long do you stay at the library?

• What is your age?

Each of these are closed questions – simply tick a few boxes and the person comes to life like a phoenix rising from the data pool. (Too much?)

Here’s another one. Let’s look at the people who attended a library program for adults. In this library service they’re skewed toward older females, so I filter my survey responses by three survey questions … Attended adult program – Female – 60+ years. Now let’s look at what these people said about their library.

• 56% said that to a great or large extent the library helps them feel more socially connected (vs 35% for all library users … that’s +21%)

• +16% … the library gets me out of the house

• +12% … the library makes my life more enjoyable

• +12% … the library connects me with others

• +9% … the library encourages me to read more.

Do those programs you put on at the library make a difference in someone’s life? Social inclusion, encouragement for reading, personal health and wellbeing – it’s right there in the data.

I could go on. All of the library users you know and (mostly) love are there, you’ve just got to look for them.

So what have I learned from this experience?

One, I didn’t learn much about the different types of people who use public libraries – who they are, what they do and what benefits they get from being at the library. I knew most of that already because I’ve spent hundreds of hours hanging out in libraries and watching these people in real life. But I now know that my perceptions are real and can be backed up by hard data. And I can rebut the arguments of someone who hasn’t spent hundreds of hours of libraries saying that libraries could be replaced by a book delivery service. Because while that might work for some Regular readers you will be condemning others to a less productive, less enjoyable and less connected life.

Two, I have learned that we need to dig deeper into survey and library usage data. If the only thing we take from our survey is an average satisfaction score of 8.7 out of 10 and a nice quote we are doing a disservice to the collective thousands of hours our library users took to answer those survey questions. The stories are there, they are rich and powerful, and they’re not that hard to find – we just need to look for them.

Three, put a question in your survey about time spent in the library. It opens up some really interesting analytical possibilities. [Btw … in this library service the overall average length of library visit was 42 minutes, but as you can see when we start to create these personas there is no such thing as an ‘average’ library user. There are lots of different types of library users.]

Four (and finally), I am reminded why I love statistics and playing around with data. For somewhere in all those %s and ratios is a real-world story busting to break out. And if we can find and tell those stories, maybe we can make the world a better place.