Emerging Trends in Library Usage

Across the United States and beyond, the public is shifting how they use library resources. Even as the Library is offering total number of open hours that are closer to pre-pandemic times building usage has not calibrated back up.
We analyzed the relationship between open hours and gate count, which is a count of the number of people who come into the building.

• FY 18-19, 5M visits (1,394 open hours per week)
• FY 19-20, 3.6M visits
• FY 20-21, 440,670 visits
• FY 22-23, 2.5M visits
• FY 23-24, 2.5M visits (1,059 open hours per week)

FY 23-24 open hours was 76% of the open hours in FY 18-19

If per open hour usage had bounced back, a proportional number of visits for FY 23-24 would have been 3.8M
When we adjust for the variance in open hours, our gate count is still down 26% from FY 18-19.