Tag Archives: library data

Library Stat of the Week #3: On average, there are 6.4 public libraries for every 100 000 people, but in Czechia, there are almost 60!

Library Stat of the Week: On average, there are 6.4 public libraries for every 100 000 people, but in Czechia, there are almost 60!A key strength of public libraries is their reach across cities, towns and villages around the world.

Focused on the needs of their communities, they aim to respond in their providing collections and services.

Clearly there will always, to some extent, be a trade-off between the number and size of libraries.

Focusing resources on just a few bigger libraries, serving more people each, may allow for more advanced services, but may come at the cost of proximity. The debate is similar to that in the health or education sector for example.

Thanks to the Library Map of the World, we can start to understand different national approaches in terms of the average number of people each library serves.

Looking across the 113 countries for which data is currently available, it is now possible to see that on average, for every 100 000 people, there are 6.4 public libraries – that’s one library for every 15 600 people.

Clearly this varies – at the top end, in Czechia, there are nearly 60 public libraries for every 100 000 people – that’s one for every 1700 people!

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download the data in order to carry out your own analysis!

See our other Library Stats of the Week!

Launching IFLA’s Library Stat of the Week

Image for Library Stat of the Week. Text: Library Stat of the Week. Images: a graph and a calendar. Logos: DA2I and Library Map of the World

Numbers give us a key means of understanding our world, and the trends and evolutions that are shaping it. They can help us make comparisons, identify successes, and make connections. They are also critical in making an effective case for providing support to libraries.

IFLA as an organisation is working hard to strengthen the availability of data about libraries and about issues related to their work through initiatives such as the Library Map of the World and the Development and Access to Information Report.

There’s already a huge amount of information available. With this series of weekly posts over 2020, we’ll be looking to highlight just a few examples and explanations.

We hope they will help you in your own work, and show you how much potential there is!

See you next week!