Libraries are social connectors - now more than ever

ANALibrarYSE is back after a long break – got lost for a bit. What have we learned in that time?

The last time I wrote it was to highlight the firm belief among 84% of library users that public libraries are a safe community place. It referenced the 2006 landmark Libraries Building Communities (LBC) research conducted by the State Library of Victoria (SLV) and Public Libraries Victoria (PLV), A Safe Place to Go (State Library of NSW and UTS, 2000) and numerous surveys we had conducted for libraries between 2009 and 2021.

Well now we have another significant (and more recent) resource to draw on, and the results are clear. More than ever before, in times of unrest and social upheaval, during periods of personal and economic hardship, public libraries are social connectors – safe places that have universal appeal and are a hub for community connections.

In 2022, 16 years after LBC, SLV and PLV decided to have another go at a statewide census and survey. All library services across Victoria participated in a 2-week survey during March and ‘a day in the life’ census of library users in May. The results, which are now starting to be published, present the feedback from 18,131 library users who completed the 8-minute survey and 16,464 library users who filled out a quick census form on leaving the library on Census Day. The first research report – Inside Our Public Libraries, https://www.plv.org.au/resources/ – summarises the findings from the survey.

One of the most interesting observations comes from the comparison of the 2006 and 2022 survey results. Do you remember 2006? Saddam Hussein was hanged. Crash beat Brokeback Mountain for the Best Picture Oscar. The Ballad of Desmond Kale won the Miles Franklin Award. West Coast beat Sydney for the AFL premiership. Steve Irwin died.

Well, in 2006 the Libraries Building Communities research found that 81% of people agreed that public libraries have a reputation as a safe place (57% Strongly agree, 24% Agree). Only 1% of people disagreed. Fast forward to 2022 and that number has jumped to 92% of respondents who feel safe at the library (67% Strongly agree, 25% Agree, 2% disagreed). Is this increase because libraries have become safer, or because there are fewer other community places and spaces where people feel safe? It’s probably a bit of both, but what matters most is the overwhelming sense of safety and security that people have when they are at the library.

There was a similar jump in the proportion of survey respondents (all 18,000 of them) who thought that their library welcomes people from all walks of life. From a very respectable 73% in 2006 this number soared up to 88% in the 2022 survey. OK, it’s not the 100% that might exist in a perfect world, but it’s a remarkable figure coming out of two years of COVID fears when being around lots of people from diverse community backgrounds was one of the most challenging things you could do. The combination of ‘universal appeal’ and ‘I feel safe’ is not what might have been expected, but it is a powerful endorsement of the place that libraries have in the community and the acceptance of most community members that in our everyday lives we rub shoulders with people like us and people who are not like us – and that’s OK.

All good news so far, but it was the third survey question in this group that was the real winner. In 2006, 47% of survey respondents thought that their library was a hub for community connections. In 2022 the corresponding figure was 82% (50% Strongly agree, 32% Agree, 3% disagree). That is an extraordinary change in the perception of public libraries. More than 4 out of 5 library users now see their library as an active connecting community place. A place where people come together to do things, to be around other people, to feel like part of something bigger.

Maybe this was a post-COVID bounce as people were allowed out of their homes once more after two years of forced social isolation? A time when libraries, perhaps more than any other public instituion, reached out to and held on to many who were feeling lost and alone. More than that this was a consequence of the deliberate effort libraries have made over the previous two decades to accentuate their place in the community. Yes, a place for books, but just as much a place for people. A place where people come to meet, to share and to be. A quiet place and a vibrant place all at the same time. And a place where someone will greet you with a smile, and maybe by name. That’s got to make you feel like you belong. Especially for those people for whom social isolation and the risk of losing community connection was not a COVID-factor but an everyday reality (for example, the proportion of people who live alone alone continues to increase, up from 24.7% at the 2016 ABS census to 25.9% in 2021).

So more than the 92% on safety and the 88% on welcoming all sorts of people (which are both wondeful results), this is the survey finding that I belive is the most significant. It proves the point that public libraries are not static. Libraries are constantly evolving and quietly re-inventing themselves because that’s what their communities need. Libraries were building communities back in 2006, and they continue to build connected and resilient communities in 2022. You’ve got to be proud of that!

[And just quietly, looking forward to the upcoming release of more findings from the 2022 Victorian survey and census research.]