What Lee Rainie and his team of researchers discovered about public libraries is less than a mind-blowing epiphany. Even he admits that.
Yet, the subtle context in that discovery probably is key to keeping the nation’s 16,000-plus libraries relevant across generations and growing their audience. Essentially, what the research reveals is crucial to the future of libraries at a time when institutions — like news organizations, Hollywood and the music industry — try to weather the fundamental challenges of the digital age and budget cuts.
What did the Rainie research team find? Moms love libraries. A lot.
“Mothers are outliers in their enthusiasm for libraries and their use of libraries for their own purposes, like visiting the library, checking out books, using library websites and connecting to libraries with mobile devices,” concludes a report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, which Rainie directs.
It turns out that 94 percent of mothers surveyed contend that libraries are important to the community, 82 percent have library cards and 73 percent of them visit the library, compared with 53 percent of the overall population. More than half of mothers surveyed visit library websites, and nearly half use computers at the public library, the Pew research reports.
Pew’s research is part of an ongoing project to study libraries and their patrons in the digital age. Those most recent figures, gleaned from a survey of 2,252 Americans ages 16 and above, are encouraging but hardly a call to stop the presses, until one considers what is driving those numbers.
Pam Biederman is. So are Maryanne Szweda and Jennifer Leavitt. They’re moms who take their children to public libraries regularly, some nearly every day.
“I think the thing that draws me to the library, and has since I became a mother is that you can literally come here and spend a whole morning, between playing with the toys and story time, and playing games on the computer and checking out some books,” said Biederman, visiting Naperville’s Nichols Library with son Brian, 5, one recent Tuesday, “and it’s absolutely free of charge. That’s the best game in town.”
Spread on the table she shared with Brian were about 10 items: phonics books, Power Ranger and Spongebob DVDs. Biederman said she got a library card within two weeks of moving to Naperville 13 years ago and began using the library extensively after the birth of her first child, Grace. Today, Grace reads at a level well above her second-grade status, Biederman said.
“I think part of the reason is because we got her interested in all kinds of books at a very early age,” by bringing Grace to the library, Biederman said. “She just has this memory in her head of always going to the library … and she saw how many different books there were to read.”
Motherhood has taken its toll on Biederman’s pleasure reading, she said, but she still uses the library for more practical purposes.
“Whenever we take vacations,” Biederman said, “I go upstairs and get a travel guide for where we’re headed because they’re usually pretty current here and I can do my researching before we go. I love that.”
Around the corner was Maryanne Szweda, of Aurora, with her four home-schooled children. She visits Nichols or the Aurora Public Library three times a week, she said.
“If I’m doing something on my curriculum, I can come here and get 10 books on that,” she said, “whether it be history, geography, science or math. There’s a book for everything, with pictures, and it just re-enforces their learning.”
Apart from her family’s use of the library, Szweda counted herself among the 94 percent of moms who believe libraries are important to the entire community. She and Biederman noted the resources — computer labs, wide-ranging classes and programs — all free and open to anyone with a library card.
“It’s the best thing you can have for a community,” Szweda said.
About 30 miles east, in the Humboldt Park Branch of the Chicago Public Library, Leavitt escorted her twin 7-year-old daughters through the entrance the minute it opened at noon on a Wednesday. The library in February completed a $4.5 million addition dedicated to youth materials and programs.
Like Biederman and Szweda, Leavitt noted the free and wide variety of activities and resources, including the Kids Museum Passport program, in which children with library cards can obtain free passes to Chicago museums by checking out the passes just as they would books.
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“If you’re here every day, you see the same people every day,” added Leavitt, who said she brings her daughters to the library three times a week during the school year and more often in summer. “Then you start talking to your neighbors and suddenly, everybody knows everyone, which is safer for you, safer for the kids. It’s great for the employees here. It works out for everybody.”
These shared experiences and perspectives in suburbia and the city carry a great deal of significance for libraries, Rainie said. Combine those fundamental challenges of reduced funding and the digital onslaught and libraries seem to occupy a somewhat tenuous connection to their communities. The statistics underscore the uncertainty.
Public libraries circulated 2.46 billion materials in 2010 — highest in a decade — but the average number of library visits per capita reported in a 2012 Public Library Association survey was 6.61 per year, a slight drop from the previous year.
Experts speculate that the decrease in visits was caused by a rise in the use of remote or online library services, downloadable materials and online databases, indicators that libraries are becoming “technology hubs,” Rainie said.
The urgency — or desperation — of libraries’ efforts to appeal is evident in a dizzying smorgasbord of their offerings. In addition to wider digital services, libraries have offered read-to-dog events and toga parties, fishing pole lending programs and chocolate-tasting classes, even a recording studio.
Mothers provide some stability and hope in that churning landscape, Rainie said. They are savvy adapters of technology, resourceful and practical, and very anxious that their children read, he added.
All of which contributes to their status as the most ardent fans of public libraries, and very important to libraries for perhaps less obvious reasons, Rainie said.
“They (libraries) could build their audience and do themselves well to have moms on their side,” he added. If moms are happy with their children’s experiences in the library, chances are high that those kids will continue to patronize the library as adults and bring their children to the library, Rainie said. That dynamic has the potential to build patronage exponentially.
In addition, Rainie pointed out that “mothers will talk to librarians when librarians ask questions,” a relationship that is immensely helpful in designing libraries of the future. The Pew research also indicates mothers are highly aware of what’s happening and available at the library, making them capable activists and marketers of libraries. Add their skill at networking and it becomes clear that mothers are valuable for a number of reasons, Rainie said.
Libraries are well aware of mothers’ influence and importance, said Ruth Lednicer, Chicago Public Library director of marketing and communications, but “we appreciate having that statistical backup for what we’ve seen.” It helps support what the library already is doing, she said.
“What we’ve known for a long time is, even people who don’t think about using the library before they have kids, when they have kids, it suddenly reminds them of all the resources we have,” she said.
Back at the Naperville library, Erin Ferguson said she began reading to her children “before they were born.” Her first job at 15 years old was in a library. Now, at 30, she regularly visits Nichols with her children, Joshua, 6, and Abby, 2.
“With so much technology now and games, kids are kind of losing out on the actual holding of a book,” she said. Her children sat nearby paging through books. “And, this way, they don’t have to take up all the space in my house.”
For now, those visits include her grabbing a few books — she doesn’t always have the luxury of browsing the shelves — and then playing with puzzles.
“As soon as that wears off,” Ferguson said, “I chase them around. It’s a relaxing place … usually,” she said. Then she laughed.