LIbrary Cards

 

Who has a library card?

 According to the 2015 Harris Poll 63% of Americans have a library card. The scale is tipped by women holding the most cards. Nationally library cardholders are 55% women and 45% men. FCPL’s 135,322 cardholders are similar to the national average with 59% of the cardholders who selected a gender when registering for a library card female and the other 41% male. 

 Among kids and teens the numbers are believed to be fairly divided between boys and girls at FCPL, especially with the Forsyth County Schools library card program, so the disparity locally is among adults.

 It is also of interest to note that according to ALA many libraries have discontinued collecting this type of data. There may be many factors that make up these statistics, but the biggest takeaway is there are plenty of people who currently need a library card and the larger percentage is men.

Many thanks to Jen Bell, Andrea DelValle, and Joan Dudzinski for diving into the numbers on this one. If you have a great idea to entice new patrons into the branches or ways the Outreach team can sign people up for library cards please share it with your co-workers and supervisor.