With all the budget cuts and folks naysaying about the death of reading and how libraries are becoming outdated and unnecessary in our digital world, it's always good to have real, hard, factual evidence that proves them wrong.
According to a Pew Research Center study, 83% of Americans between the ages 16-29 have read a book in the past year (that's compared with 70% of adults 30+ who said they have). And there's tons more good news about library usage for research and stuff like that. One interesting tidbit was that though the under 30 crowd was less likely to eread on a tablet (surprising, right?), 58% of them would like to borrow loaded ereaders from the library, but only about 10% have ever done so. Clearly, libraries need to do a better job of promoting their ecollections (myself included). Both The New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor have write up that share a bit more of the results and give a little commentary.
My two cents? Of course young people are reading and using libraries! Libraries have tons of programming specifically for teens and young adults and over the last decade or so, have even devoted whole sections of the library to meeting the needs of this group. What this proves: If you build it, they will come!
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