In the past few blog posts I’ve largely focused on libraries as a whole: all departments, all locations, funding distributed throughout a library, staffing in all parts of a library’s location. While they are not especially common in Massachusetts, library branches and/or bookmobiles (hereafter referred to as outlets) can play a large role in ensuring community access to library services. So, let’s take a dive into how an economic downturn might affect the services offered outside of a main or central library and see how they compare to some of my previous posts’ discoveries.  

Library Outlets

Library outlets hold a special place in my heart. My first library job was running a neighborhood branch of a fairly large library. I saw firsthand how people mostly visited on foot or bikes (as opposed to driving or public transit), how heavily it was visited by families and people who have been in the area for generations, how personalized the services could be because it was a smaller space with a high proportion of regulars. It was a true definition of a community gathering space where neighbors would catch up after bumping into each other at the circulation desk and kids would meet after school to do homework together. Not every library branch or bookmobile will look precisely like this and that’s the point. The branch that I ran was the type of space I just described because of the makeup of its neighborhood.

That’s the beauty of library outlets; they take on the distinctive characteristics of the area that surrounds them and the people that visit them. They are a unique opportunity for a library to provide services to people who may not otherwise have access to library services. They serve a smaller group than a main or central library and have fewer staff and funds as a result. But outlets know how to use their limited resources to tailor their collections and services to the portion of the community they serve. I give this background because not every community has bookmobiles or branches. Some communities are so small that their main library takes on the qualities of a branch library. Some larger communities are centrally located with accessible public transit and/or parking. And some communities may benefit from expanding services to an outlet but are unable to afford the undertaking. According to ARIS (from FY24, our most recent data for now), there are 98 library outlets in MA across 38 municipalities. So only about 11% of municipalities in the Commonwealth have bookmobiles and/or branches with many of those cities and towns having multiple locations within their borders.  

With such a small number of MA libraries having outlets at all, why look at their data? Even in the well-established and much-loved community branch I worked at, the moment budget difficulties were on the horizon, someone inevitably floated the idea of closing down a branch to save costs. These ideas never went anywhere beyond that, largely because the community members of the branch were vocal about their support. However, in the event of another recession, if budget shortfalls are severe enough, outlets may find the idea of their closure taken a bit more seriously. So, let’s take a look at the potential value outlets offer their communities.  

Outlet Circulation and Visitors

If we extrapolate these percentages, assuming they will apply in the event of another economic downturn, library outlets are looking at an additional 12,584 circulations per year, which works out to 242 more circulations every week. Put another way, outlets could circulate more than 34 extra items per day which could total 58,447 circulations annually. For visitors, outlets could be looking at an additional 18,401 people each year, which adds an extra 351 people every week. So, foot traffic could increase in outlets by more than 50 people every day. Practically speaking, outlets are not open as many days as a central, main or single library is which means that these numbers, on any given day are likely to be higher, adding an additional strain on resources that are designed to be somewhat smaller than their larger counterparts.  

Outlet Open Hours

This difference of about 2 hours each week is similar to the libraries overall; however, when you’re dealing with smaller numbers, the percentage of hours affected goes up. Library outlets had 7.1% fewer open hours during the Great Recession than they did pre-recession. Put another way, the community members relying on their local branch or bookmobile for library services had 7.1% fewer opportunities to do so. This is in comparison to the 2.7% reduction in libraries overall between those two time periods.  

If we look to a potential future that may include a recession, a 7.1% decrease in open hours would bring outlets down to 1,508 hours each year (compared to the 1623 hours they have been open on average during the past 3 FY). Once again, this works out to about 2 fewer hours each week, but as we saw in the numbers above, these  compressed hours, already lower than what their more robust counterparts offer, could be trying to accommodate 242 more items circulated and 352 additional people through their doors during those shorter time spans.  

Reference Transactions

This means that during the great recession, reference transactions increased by 51.2%. This is a pretty large jump in the number of questions that patrons asked, especially considering that reference transactions in libraries overall went up by 14%.  

There is a large uptick in the number of reference transactions in the last 3 years. Outlets have seen an average of 18,985 patron questions every year. That is a 137% increase in patron questions from the average number of questions during the Great Recession. ** The recent past has seen an average of 18,085 patron questions each year. Extrapolating percentages above into a possible future in which an economic downturn occurs, outlets could be looking at an increase of 9,264 patron questions each year, or an extra 178 questions per week. This means that staff could be fielding an additional 25 questions every day.  

I think it would be reasonable to argue that when people rely more on libraries overall during an economic downturn, they rely even more on the community outlets that provide those personalized services.

The Bigger Picture

The fact that the percentages for outlets were considerably higher than for libraries overall can seem startling but put in context it makes a certain amount of sense. While library branches are smaller in staff, funding, building size, often just about every library parameter we can measure, their proportional impact is considerable. This is likely a function of the nature of outlets; they are tailored to their communities. While library systems need to keep the broadest range of patrons in mind, outlets need to use the smaller amount of resources they are allocated to focus  on what their community needs the most and spend those resources (whether it is staff time, funding, space, etc.) accordingly. They also have a smaller population of people to interact with, which means they can make more personalized recommendations and tailor their questions more specifically because they know who they are working with. That impact could potentially be greater in the event there is a recession in the future. Remember, library outlets by their nature operate with fewer hours and smaller staff sizes than main or central libraries. We are looking at a potential increase in all the patron metrics while simultaneously seeing a decrease in operations metrics. If your municipality has an outlet, consider how your experience may differ with more visitors, a busier public services desk and fewer opportunities to have that experience in the first place.  

I think it would be reasonable to argue that when people rely more on libraries overall during an economic downturn, they rely even more on the community outlets that provide those personalized services. Given this data, it’s reasonable to wonder, if library outlets are offering a higher return on investment than library systems, which already have an astounding ROI. If your library has an outlet, it would be worth mentioning these statistics to your advocates and those making financial decisions. In the event of an economic downturn, if someone wonders whether the municipality can afford to have more than 1 library location, the counter argument may be that the community the outlet serves cannot afford its loss, especially given the potential increase in usage.  

*Same parameters for years apply: Pre-recession = FY2006-08; Great Recession = FY2009-11. However, for some reason, the outlet data for FY2009 was not available on the MBLC’s statistics website. Given the patterns from the 2009, 2010 and 2011 data in other categories, I believe using the 2010 and 2011 is a reasonable approximation for the Great Recession averages. The 3 years that I am using to determine the most recent numbers for extrapolation are FY2022, FY2023 and FY2024.  

** There could be a number of reasons for this including, better and more rigorous ways to reliably report patron’s questions on the ARIS, more patrons asking questions at their local branches, increased trust in the outlets, etc. I don’t have enough data to say for certain what the cause of this increase is, but considering the average of the past three years had each year consistently higher than the Great Recession, I would still consider this data to be accurate and not an anomaly.  

~ Al Hayden, MBLC Library Advisory Specialist

In the last few blog entries I’ve done some extrapolations about what library services could look like if we head into an economic downturn. There are a few more metrics I’d like to explore as I think they can paint a broader picture of not only what libraries may face in the future, but also highlight what libraries are currently doing. It’s never a bad idea to have current information at hand for your library advocates.  

What story do library open hours tell us?

Pre-recession, * MA libraries were open an average of 2,536 hours every year, which works out to libraries being open 49 hours each week. During the Great Recession libraries were open an average of 2,467 hours every year, or 47 hours each week. This is a 2.7% reduction in open hours or 2 hours less each week that the library was available for services. At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a very large difference, especially considering that the differences among other metrics were considerably larger. So, what does this mean in terms of the bigger picture?  

Let’s look at those stats in terms of usage. If circulations went up by 12.5% and attendance went up by 32.4% but hours were reduced by 2.7%, that means there were 2 fewer hours for the library staff to accommodate the additional 518 visitors per week and 315 more items they were circulating every week.** Remember that staffing during the Great Recession went down by 2.3%. Having the library open for fewer hours, even if it’s 2 fewer hours each week, is still more of a burden that library staff will have to bear in terms of helping more people in a shorter amount of time. Again, these percentages are not high, but even small numbers trending downward can be impactful in terms of how libraries can accommodate the services their patrons rely on and the potential uptick in patrons needing those services. 

The average of open hours for the most current 3 years we have data for is 2581 hours per year or 50 open hours each week. If we extrapolate the 2.7% reduction in hours experienced in the past recession, that brings the average open hours per week down, once again, by 2 hours per library. I’ve already estimated the increase in circulation would add 441 items and 455 visitors per week, in addition to the circulation and foot traffic that libraries are already receiving. If staffing also goes down 2.3% as it did during the last recession, then we are once again looking at potentially fewer people available during fewer hours to offer services to an increasing number of people who may need an increasing number of items. Are libraries prepared for that? Based on the funding numbers I looked at in my last post, and considering the rising costs of popular items like ebooks, maybe not.  

What about the children?

During the great recession, children’s items circulated on average, about 13.2% more than they did pre-recession. That’s a slightly higher percentage than all library items (including children’s) circulating as a whole. This works out to an extra 134 items every week circulating through children’s departments during the recession.  

Current circulations for children’s items average 168 items per day. Add an additional 13.2% of circulation items on this adds another 22 totaling 190 children’s items circulated each day. Framing that in the weekly terms I used above, circulation desks will experience an uptick of an additional 155 items every week in children’s items alone.

The average number of children participating in summer reading increased by 114 participants, an increase of 35.6%. As someone who ran a children’s department for several years, I can tell you, summer is chaos for children’s departments in libraries. A 35.6% increase of summer reading participation is simultaneously the stuff librarian dreams are made of and also an exceptionally daunting amount of work. “Summer reading” is not just encouraging students to fill out a book list. It is school visits, coordinating prizes, booklist creation to complement that year’s theme, reminding caregivers and kiddos that the summer reading list is optional, and they can read whatever they want. The labor involved in coordinating programming is an additional level of complexity and none of the work I just mentioned starts at the end of the school year. Many librarians start working out the details of summer reading in January/February. And all of this work involves consumables, staff time, program presenters, prizes and more; in other words, money and resources.  

Today, there are considerably fewer summer reading participants than even pre-recession levels. There could be any number of reasons for this; the pandemic comes to mind as a big one, but I’m sure there are other factors at play.**** But even with the low summer reading participation numbers (MA libraries averaged 154 participants over the past 3 years), adding 35.6% to those numbers is still has an additional 55 kids participating in summer reading and the costs, work, and time that go into prepping a summer reading program may need to be scaled up accordingly.  

Got Questions?

Having worked in various positions in libraries I can tell you unequivocally that reference transactions are chronically underreported. That observation makes what I found looking at reference transaction patterns even more intriguing. 

For the purposes of this post, I’ll use reference transactions and patron questions interchangeably.  

The breadth of reference transactions is vast, and the nature of library work is often so hectic that it’s incredibly easy to forget how many people you’ve interacted with in a span of time. So, when considering these numbers, keep in mind that they are probably much smaller than any particular library’s reality. 

Libraries are either not fielding or not recording as many reference transactions in recent years (most likely a combination of both); the average number of reference transactions that have been reported in the last 3 years is 8,934. If we increase that number by 14%, library staff will still be fielding 1251 more questions over the course of a given year. Also keep in mind that while some questions patrons ask can be answered fairly quickly, others can become a bit of a project, including possible follow-ups with the inquiring patron. It would be a mistake to think that a patron question is a matter of taking up a library worker’s time for a minute or two, every time. Again, if we’re looking at potentially fewer open hours, the time patrons can come into the library will be condensed. If we’re looking at fewer staff working, that means the number of people patrons can come to with their questions will also be condensed. All of this equals a busier public services desk, which can potentially lead to more underreporting of statistics because library staff don’t have the time or the bandwidth to to log their reference interactions.  

What might the future hold?

With the statistics I described above, combined with what I’ve explored in the past few posts, a potential picture of MA libraries during an economic downturn is emerging. It is one of a library that is open fewer hours, has fewer staff members, and is likely not funded enough to keep up with rising costs, but is still expected to accommodate an influx of patron visits, patron questions, patron participation, and circulated items.  

None of these tasks come without work that is largely invisible to the general public, and usually stays invisible for good reason. Libraries employ professionals, experts who are highly skilled to get to know their communities, offer exceptional customer service, and tailor their services to their community’s needs. They are trained to make the public-facing work look effortless because that is part of being a professional. This is behind-the-scenes work that isn’t meant for public notice, but it doesn’t lesson the fact that an extraordinary amount of work is being put in to ensure that communities have the services that are most relevant to their members. In order to keep doing that work to the best of their ability, libraries and library workers, need the support that will help keep those services running smoothly. Without that support (support measured in more than just money), the quality of service that patrons are used to will likely suffer and, in some cases, some of the services that patrons are used to will be unsustainable, leading to their elimination. 

How do we avoid, or at least minimize this potential outcome? Talk to your library advocates and let them know what stands to be lost and gained by keeping their library well supported in any season, but especially in the event of a recession. If the data I’ve explored so far demonstrates anything, it’s that people tend to rely more on libraries in tougher economic times and library staff do their best to provide services to their communities, regardless of the circumstances.  

*** I’m using the term juvenile here to refer to children only, not teens. Every library in MA is going to have their own age range they use to make these determinations, but infants to 5th grade (put another way: birth through elementary school) are common limiters. There are separate statistics for teen usage, but they do not go back far enough for me to analyze.  

**** Unfortunately, I don’t have the data to delve into that side-quest (yet….) 

~ Al Hayden, MBLC Library Advisory Specialist