Welcome back to another edition of Fortifying Your Library! While I remain committed to being a policy nerd and will continue to offer policy-based content that hopefully helps your libraries, there are other ways to fortify your library. I wanted to spend some time addressing a question that has been on my mind for several months and the results of that inquiry. The results of the inquiry, while not particularly surprising, were very informative, nonetheless. And I wanted to share that information with all of you in the hope that you will be able to use it to prepare your library.
The Question
The question I wanted to address was: what happens to public libraries during an economic recession? As you may suspect, what prompted this inquiry was the large quantity of media speculation as to whether or not the US is heading towards a recession. As it turns out, there are no universally agreed upon indicators that can predict an impending recession. The definition of an economic recession comes from the independently run National Bureau of Economic Research‘s Business Cycle Dating Committee, but they only define it once data has come through that shows that the US has met those markers for a specific period of time (i.e. they confirm the country is in a recession once a recession has already begun). Which confirms that we cannot know what the future holds. That said, the media talk of the possibility of an impending economic recession is still out there. If that happens, the lack of available funds can strain budgets and libraries should have a strategy of what to do in that case, whether the potential for a recession is weeks or years away.
Libraries and the Great Recession – The Data
We can’t predict the future, but we can look at trends from the past. Fortunately, there’s a peer-reviewed study on that! In 2023 Public Library Quarterly published an article by Michael R. Mabe titled, Impact of Great Recession on Library Use: Does a Negative Economy Impact Library Use? Mabe discovered that public library usage and circulation both increased by a statistically significant amount when the economy turns downward. I highly recommend reading the study in its entirety, as it provides background for the anecdotal evidence that has been a part of library lore for decades that prompted his inquiry in the first place and it describes how he arrived at his conclusions. But for context, here are the key takeaways that were most relevant to answer my question:
- The study demonstrates that library usage increased in a statistically significant way during the Great Recession when compared to the years leading up to the Great Recession
- Circulation increased 13.3% on average, nationally
- Library attendance increased 26.8% on average, nationally
- Public use of the library increased regardless of whether the library received proportional budgetary support
What about Massachusetts?
Mabe used national data to arrive at his conclusions, but we here in MA are lucky to have statistics that every library reports annually: ARIS (Annual Report Information Survey). Many thanks to all of you who have gone through the process of collecting and submitting these statistics. Much of the information I collected to replicate Mabe’s findings were from the ARIS. I used Mabe’s definitions of pre-recession and Great Recession, which is a pretty narrow scope. One could easily make an argument that the economic effects of the Great Recession lasted beyond 2011 and we could certainly get a fuller pre-recession picture looking back a bit further. However, to keep the parallels between my inquiry and the study’s statistically significant data, I’ve stuck to his definitions to make the best apples-to-apples comparison possible. Therefore, pre-recession is defined as the years 2006, 2007, and 2008; Great Recession is defined as the years 2009, 2010, and 2011. Yes, we do have MA library data going back to 2006! You can find all of the ARIS reports and data spreadsheets on the MBLC’s Library Statistics page. I compiled the statewide average for each year listed for each metric (circulation, attendance), then I (or, more accurately, the spreadsheet) calculated the average of the 3 pre-recession years and the 3 Great Recession years.
Here’s what I found out about Massachusetts:
There were generally about 370 libraries that submit the ARIS, so for each metric, I had about 370 data points to work with. Our usage pre- and during the Great Recession did, indeed increase over those times.
- For the 3 pre-recession years, MA libraries averaged 156,815 total circulation (this includes circulations direct from each library AND inter-library loans [ILLs]) and had an average of 81,872 visitors each year.
- For the 3 Great Recession years, MA Libraries averaged 176,475 total circulation (direct and ILL) and had an average of 108,403 visitors each year.
Which means that in Massachusetts libraries:
- Circulation increased 12.5% during the Great Recession
- Attendance increased 32.4% during the Great Recession
By comparison, these numbers are pretty close to the national average of 13.3% increase in circulation and 26.8% increase in attendance that Mabe found in his study.
What does this mean?
My conclusion from this MA-specific information is that I’m comfortable enough with the proximity of our data to the national data that I would consider* this information statistically significant as well. Which also means that we now have data to indicate that in a time of economic downturn, MA residents relied more on their libraries.
I also looked at one of the other points that Mabe took into consideration about library usage, which was not related to the budgetary support the library received. You can find the data I used for MA by using the municipal pie. Library funding increased between pre- and Great Recession by 4.37%. This percentage is clearly not equivalent to the increases MA libraries saw in usage. Another interesting point that came out of the municipal pie was that pre-recession, the percentage of their municipality’s General Fund that went to libraries averaged 1.30%. The average percentage of the General Fund that went to libraries during the Great Recession was 1.28%, so while libraries got a modest increase in funding from their municipalities in terms of dollar amounts, they did not get as high a percentage of the overall funds available from their municipality during the economic downturn, despite library usage increasing.
Great? Now what?
While the future is still unknowable, we can look back to where we’ve been, and where we’ve been is an increase in library usage when the economy declines. Whether or not we are immediately headed for another recession, I’d like to posit that we can extrapolate our numbers of the past and see what the potential could be for future library usage if patterns stay the same. Which is precisely what I’ll be exploring in my next post…
* For clarity, the years I define for MA are fiscal years because that is how our data is collected. Mabe did not specify whether or not he was using fiscal years for his study.
** Full disclosure, anything I may have learned in my college statistics classes promptly fell out of my head the moment I finished the finals.
~ Al Hayden, MBLC Library Advisory Specialist