by Fred Finch
Quick Summary
At the Minitex Interlibrary Loan Conference on May 10th, Lee Rainie from the Pew Research Center touched on a statistic that caught my interest. Across the nation, requests for physical items in public and academic libraries have had a steady decrease over the past 4 years. Rainie also noted that those numbers are beginning to level out.
At the Minitex Interlibrary Loan Conference on May 10th, Lee Rainie from the Pew Research Center touched on a statistic that caught my interest. Across the nation, requests for physical items in public and academic libraries have had a steady decrease over the past 4 years. Rainie also noted that those numbers are beginning to level out.
We have noticed the same scenario happening at Minitex. Interlibrary loan requests and direct send materials (items that pass through the Minitex Delivery System when the ILL request is not handled by Minitex) had a decrease of 2% - 8% over the last four years. That changed this year when traffic increased just over 1% through April.
Perhaps there is nothing like the feel of a book in hand to enhance the story on the page.
