Tag Archives: #LibraryStatOfTheWeek

Library Stat of the Week #19: Countries with more librarians tend to have fewer low-skilled adults

So far, our sub-series of Library Stat of the Week posts focused on equality has looked only at income inequality (see #16, #17 and #18).

Yet income is often an indicator, rather than a cause, of inequalities in society, even if it can also reinforce them. Therefore, some people may have low revenues while others have high ones for a number of reasons – health, unemployment, a lack of entrepreneurship opportunities.

A key driver of course is education and skills – human capital. These affect the ability of individuals to take up quality jobs, or to start their own businesses, as well as to benefit fully from the information around them.

At a societal level, skills increase the productive potential of economies, while also contributing to civic engagement and participation.

Inequalities in skills – as well as larger numbers of people with lower levels of skills – can therefore lead not only to inequalities in employment and earnings, but also differing levels of involvement in civic life.

While schools of course have a major impact on levels of literacy among children, the role of libraries – in particular for literacy – is arguably stronger among adults.

Both through providing continuing access to books in order to maintain levels of literacy, and focused learning opportunities, libraries are major players in lifelong learning, in particular for those who may not have access to training through their employment – or the resources to pay for continuing education.

Therefore, for our 19th Library Stat of the Week, we wanted to look at the relationship between the measures of adult skills created through the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC), and data from IFLA’s Library Map of the World on numbers of public and community libraries and librarians per 100 000 people.

In doing this, we focused in particular on figures on literacy inequality (the points gap between the 5th and 95th percentiles – i.e. between the person with the 5th from lowest and the 5th from highest skills in a representative sample of 100 people from the group), and the share of the population scoring below Level 1 on the PIAAC scale (i.e. with very low skills).

Public and Community Libraries and Librarians vs Skills Inequalities (Points Gap between 5th and 95th Percentile)

The first comparison looks at points gaps between the 5th and 95th percentiles. With each dot representing a country for which both PIAAC and Library Map of the World data is available, a higher figure for the points gap indicates greater inequality in levels between the most and least literate.

The comparison here indicates that that there is, a broad correlation in particular between numbers of public libraries and adult literacy inequality, with more libraries tending to mean less inequality.

While there are some countries with low inequality and low numbers of libraries, there are none with lots of libraries and high inequality. The correlation is, however, weaker between numbers of librarians and literacy inequalities.

Secondly, we can look at the shares of low skilled adults in different countries and numbers.

Public and Community Libraries and Librarians and Shares of Low-Skilled Adults (scoring at Level 1 or less on the OECD PIAAC Scale)

This graph tells a slightly different story. Here, it is the number of librarians that sees the strongest correlations, with more public and community librarians tending to be associated with fewer adults with particularly low literacy. Meanwhile, the relationship is weaker between numbers of public and community libraries, and numbers of low-literate adults.

Once again, there are outliers, with some countries managing low shares of low-skilled adults without higher numbers of librarians, but no country with higher numbers of librarians or libraries also had high shares of less literate adults.

 

As ever, correlation is not causality, and societies that invest more in ensuring that everyone has access to skills may well also be more likely to invest in libraries and library staff.

Nonetheless, the data would fit with the evidence from the ground that libraries provide a means for people of all ages to maintain their literacy skills, and that library workers, through their understanding of community needs, can help those most in need of support.

 

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download key library data in order to carry out your own analysis! See our other Library Stats of the Week! We are happy to share the data that supported this analysis on request.

Library Stat of the Week #18: Societies with more public librarians tend to have higher social mobility

In the last two Library Stat of the Week posts (#16 and #17), we’ve looked at the relationship between the numbers of public and community libraries and librarians per 100 000 people, and a key indicator of inequality, the Gini Coefficient.

Drawing on data from the Library Map of the World and the World Bank, it has been possible to show that there is an association between these. Both having more libraries, and more librarians tends to be linked to lower levels of inequality.

Indeed, as highlighted last week, even when controlling for the number of libraries in a country, having more librarians per library is also correlated with higher levels of equality.

A next step is to look at equality over time, or social mobility. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development does this by looking at the level of change – or ‘elasticity’ of wages between fathers and sons.

This makes it possible to show how far someone from a poor background has a chance of finding a well-paid job or other opportunity, or whether poverty is likely to continue across generations.

This is an important indicator, not least for social cohesion and wellbeing, given that people are likely to be more optimistic about the future when the chances of improving their lives, and those of their children, are higher.

As set out in the previous blogs, libraries – and in particular public and community libraries – have a core mission to promote equity. Indeed, at the heart of the Public Library Manifesto is the idea that everyone should have access to education in order to improve their situation.

As a result, arguably, public libraries are social mobility institutions, giving everyone the chance to build better lives.

To test the connection, we can therefore compare the data already used from the Library Map of the World for the numbers of public and community libraries and librarians (numbers per 100 000 people), and the OECD’s data on social mobility (primarily available for its members – developed countries, and measured from 0-1 with 1 being the highest level of mobility), as in the below graph., with each dot representing a country for which data is available.

Graph comparing the level of social mobility in countries with the numbers of public and community libraries and librarians

This tells two contrasting tales, with seemingly relatively little link between the number of libraries per 100 000 and social mobility, but a relatively strong one between the number of librarians and mobility.

Indeed, of the top four countries for social mobility, three are also the top-performers for numbers of librarians per 100 000 people (Denmark, Finland and Norway). The only high performer on social mobility with a low number of librarians was Canada, while Hungary and France stand out for having a relatively high number of librarians, but still have lower social mobility.

As ever, correlation does not mean causality. It is true that investment in librarians is likely to be a sign of a society that cares about giving everyone an opportunity to do better. Similarly, librarianship can also be the sort of profession that allows people to be socially mobile.

It does remain a powerful message, however, that socially mobile societies tend to be those with more public and community librarians. As governments look to build more inclusive, equitable societies post-COVID-19, this is a valuable point to make.

 

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download key library data in order to carry out your own analysis! See our other Library Stats of the Week! We are happy to share the data that supported this analysis on request.

Library Stat of the Week #17: Greater Numbers of Librarians Per Public Library Are Associated with More Equal Societies

Last week, in the first of a sub-series looking at library and equality data, we explored the connection between the number of public and community libraries in a country, and how equal it is according to the Gini Coefficient (an indicator of inequality used in the Development and Access to Information Report).

Crossing the data showed that, globally, countries that tended to have more public and community libraries per 100 000 were also characterised by greater equality (i.e. lower Gini Coefficients).

However, it does not make sense to stop at simply counting libraries. The role of librarians and other library workers is key, providing a whole range of services to users. Their presence is also an indicator of how much countries are investing in the operations of their library services, rather than just the sunk costs of buildings.

Fortunately, IFLA’s Library Map of the World also collects data for numbers of librarians and related staff in public and community libraries, allowing us to look at the connection.

As a first step, we can look at the relationship between the number of public and community librarians per 100 000 people, and the Gini Coefficient.

Graph 1: Public/Community Librarians Vs Gini Coefficient

As the graph indicates, more public and community library workers per 100 000 people tends to be associated with a lower Gini Coefficient, and so lower inequality.

We can say that for every seven more public and community library workers per 100 000 people (or 70 per million), a country sees a 1-point drop in inequality.

Similarly, the same drop is associated with three extra public or community libraries per 100 000 people (or 30 per million).

Graph 2: Public/Community Librarians vs Gini Coefficient (by Region)

A second step, as in the second graph, is to break this down by region. As with the figures last week, it is clear that European countries tend to enjoy both lower levels of inequality and higher numbers of librarians, while the inverse is true of Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.

The final question then is whether having more or fewer public or community library workers makes a difference, once you take the number of libraries per head into account.

We can do this by looking at the relationship between having a greater or lesser degree of inequality than would be expected with a given number of public or community libraries, and having a greater or lesser than average number of public or community library workers.

Graph 3: Does More Librarians Mean More Equality, even after Controlling for Number of Libraries?

The third graph does this, comparing the level of equality compared to expectations on the X (horizontal) axis (calculated using the trend line in the first graph) with the number of librarians per library more or less than the average on the Y (vertical axis).

The key finding here is shown with the thick black line, which indicates that in general countries with more public and community library workers per library than average also score higher than expected for equality, while those with fewer workers score lower on equality.

The same finding applies in most work regions as well, with a particularly strong trend in Western and Central Europe, as well as Africa, Asia Oceania and the Middle East and North Africa, although is not reflected in North America (just two countries), Latin America and the Caribbean and Eastern Europe (Eurasia).

As always, correlation is not causality, and it is reasonable to assume that both higher levels of equality and higher numbers of librarians are both illustrative of societies that care more about fairness and inclusion.

Nonetheless, the indication of the connection between investment in libraries and more equal societies is a welcome one as governments reflect on how to build better societies post-COVID-19.

Next week, we’ll be looking at how data on numbers of libraries and librarians relates to levels of social mobility in societies.

 

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download key library data in order to carry out your own analysis! See our other Library Stats of the Week! We are happy to share the data that supported this analysis on request.

Library Stat of the Week #16: Globally, having more public libraries is linked to lower inequality

Libraries have an important function in societies in promoting equity.

For those who do not have the resources to access books or who cannot afford a strong internet connection or hardware, they are a free (or low-cost) alternative.

For those who could not benefit from a good education, they provide another route back into learning.

Increasingly, libraries have expanded services – consistent with their overall mission – to find other ways to help members of society at risk of information poverty.

Given this, it is worth trying to understand what we can learn from statistics about levels of inequality in the world, and how these relate to libraries, using data from the Library Map of the World.

This post – the first in a sub-series – looks at some initial indicators of the relationship between different indicators of inequality or income distribution and the presence of libraries in a country.

While this is certainly a proxy, we will use the number of public or community libraries per 100 000 people as a measure of how well served a population is.

To understand inequality, we can take two approaches – one of the standard measures of income inequality – the Gini Coefficient – and then the percentage of the population living under national poverty lines (both using World Bank figures).

These allow us both to get a sense of how income is distributed across a population in general (i.e. how ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ it is), and then what share of the population struggles to survive from day to day.

Graph comparing number of libraries per 100 000 people and the Gini coefficient

Looking at the Gini Coefficient first, as the above graph shows, there is generally an inverse relationship between the number of libraries per 100 000 people and the coefficient (a higher coefficient indicates higher inequality), indicating that the more libraries there are, the fairer a society is.

Interestingly, this relationship is less clear at the regional level, with the exceptions of North America and Europe, where there is a clear link (although obviously with North America, the sample size is small!). Globally, it becomes clear – sadly, that Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean seem to be characterised by both low numbers of public and community libraries (on the basis of the data we have) and higher levels of inequality.

Graph comparing number of public and community libraries per 100 000 people with the share of the population under the national poverty line

Turning to the share of the population under the national poverty line (see the graph above), there is a similar inverse relation between the number living in poverty, and the number of libraries per 100 000 people.

Again, this tendency is also reflected in Europe, where an extra 10 public or community libraries per 100 000 people is linked to a fall of 1.1 percentage point in the share of the population living in poverty.

Clearly, as ever, correlation is not necessarily causation. It is likely to be the case that societies that invest more in libraries also invest more in other measures to tackle inequality. In other words, more libraries can be a symptom of a more pro-equality stance, rather than the reason for this.

Nonetheless, it stands that more libraries remains linked to higher equality and lower poverty.

To explore further, given that different countries take different approaches to the number of libraries they have (fewer, bigger ones, or more, smaller ones), we’ll look at the links between the number of library workers and indicators of equality and poverty.

 

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download key library data in order to carry out your own analysis! See our other Library Stats of the Week! We are happy to share the data that supported this analysis on request.

Library Stat of the Week #14: Four out of five loans at the median national library are in electronic format

In the last two library stats of the week, we have looked at the relationship between digital and physical loans from public and academic libraries.

Based on countries for which data is available, it is clear that there is a big difference in use of eBooks and other electronic formats. In public libraries, loans of electronic books and documents represents less than 14% of all loans, while in academic libraries, the figure is more than 94%.

What about national libraries?

Often the biggest library in the country, they hold very significant collections, thanks both to legal deposit (where this is in place) and proactive collection policies. As such, they are a critical resource for researchers, educators, and all others simply with an interest in culture and history. Some are even explicitly combined with public or university library functions.

The resources they hold can be subject to particular rules, especially legal deposit copies of works. In some countries, for example, it may be possible to send physical copies of works but not digital ones. In others, there is digital access, but only in specific places.

Clearly, at a time of COVID-19, where digital tools provide the only means of accessing content, there is a need for laws and practices that allow this. In general, of course, more digital access to national library collections contributes to their mission to facilitate research, education and access to culture, without people having to travel.

So what was the situation before the crisis? IFLA’s Library Map of the World offers insights into this, with almost forty countries sharing data on how many books, eBooks, documents and downloads they offer.

Overall, it is clear that many national libraries have already seized the possibilities that digital is offering. Across countries for which data is available, the median share of digital loans and downloads in total loans was just under 80% – this was the case in Malaysia.

This means that almost four times as many books and documents were being shared electronically than physically. In 13 of the 38 countries, national libraries were sharing over ten times as many works in digital form than in physical. Nonetheless, in fifteen the share of digital books and documents in the total was less than 50%.

To some extent, as set out above, differences between national libraries may be down to the rules they face and the nature of their collections. What is certain is that in current circumstances, there is a real value in finding ways to facilitate access to the works that they hold.

 

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download key library data in order to carry out your own analysis! See our other Library Stats of the Week! We are happy to share the data that supported this analysis on request.

Library Stat of the Week #13: Globally, 94.6% of documents borrowed from academic libraries are digital

In last week’s Library Stat of the Week, we looked at eLending in public and community libraries, both in terms of loans per user, and the relationship with physical lending.

This underlined that while eLending continued to represent only a relatively small share of total lending – arguably due in part to the conditions under which libraries can do it – this already represented up to 15% of total loans in some countries.

This week, we’re looking at academic libraries. Here, use of electronic materials has been common for much longer.

The internet has opened up exciting possibilities to promote access to research from around the world, and opened the door to a world where it is not only those affiliated to the largest institutions who can draw on comprehensive collections of literature.

Of course, this is not yet the case, due to the slow spread of Open Access, and of course the fact that barely half of the world’s population can access the internet.

A particular concern at the moment – at the time of the COVID-19 Pandemic – is when access is limited to people in the library or on campus according to the terms of contracts. Many of the eBooks borrowed, or documents downloaded, by students and researchers from academic libraries will be subject to such restrictions.

Without action, education and innovation risks serious disruption. With action, we will see the potential of the internet realised – and of course a stronger case still for investing in universal connectivity.

So how extensive is the use of electronic documents in academic libraries? Figures reported on IFLA’s Library Map of the World for eBook loans and document downloads offer an idea.

Across the 55 countries and territories reporting such data, there were almost 12 billion such loans or downloads in the year of reporting. Across the 49 for which both these numbers, and numbers of registered users are available, that makes for over 137 loans or downloads per user per year.

In 51 countries and territories, we can also compare eBook loans and downloads with physical book and document loans. As a share of total loans and downloads, electronic ones account for 94.6% of the total!

Looking across world regions, the highest shares of electronic loans and downloads are in Latin America and the Caribbean (96.4%) and Asia (96.2%), while the European Union and Middle East and North Africa are both well over 80%.

The lowest shares – on incomplete data – are in Africa (47.2%) and non-EU Europe (43.5%). In Micronesia – the only country in Oceania with all relevant data, the figure is only 6.2%.

The data highlights the need for a dual approach for academic libraries in future – both ensuring that those which are already heavily reliant on digital materials are able to use them fully, and working to help those still primarily using physical ones to access all that digital tools have to offer.

 

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download key library data in order to carry out your own analysis! See our other Library Stats of the Week! We are happy to share the data that supported this analysis on request.

Library Stat of the Week #12: Pre-pandemic, eLending from public libraries lagged well-behind traditional lending. But in Denmark, eBooks already represented 1 in 7 book loans

With libraries around their world forced to close their doors to the public, there have been major spikes in demand for digital content, and in particular eBooks.

Of course, libraries globally have been doing what they can to develop their digital offer for users. Digital tools and materials offer a great possibility not only to provide access to more diverse content, but also to support users in remote areas or who have mobility challenges.

At the same time, they have faced challenges connected with the failure of copyright laws to keep up with the digital age, and the fact that markets have not really adapted. A long-term challenge for libraries will be to ensure that if ever such a crisis comes again, our institutions can rely on laws, not discretionary decisions, to do their jobs.

It will be a while before we can tell exactly what the impact of the pandemic on library eLending will be, but thanks to data collected through the Library Map of the World, we can already start to understand what the situation before was.

While we are still a long way from complete data on this, we can already look at the situation in a number of countries.

For example, in Germany, each registered user in a public or community library borrows 3.9 eBooks or other electronic documents a year (2018 figures), while in Denmark, it’s 2.3 (2018), in Austria 1.5 (2018), in New Zealand 1.1 (2016), in Finland 1 (2018) and in the Netherlands, 0.95 (2018). In both the UK (2018) and US (2014), it’s between 0.8 and 0.9, while in Singapore (2018) it’s 0.7 and in Spain (2017), it’s only 0.2.

A slightly different picture emerges when looking at how these figures relate to numbers of physical loans. Here, the biggest share of eBooks in total book loans is in Denmark, where they represent 1 in 7 loans in total, while in Germany, the figure was 1 in 8.

Graph showing both number of Ebook Loans per user in Public Libraries, and the share of eBook Loans in total loansIn both Spain and the United States, it’s 1 in 14, and New Zealand 1 in 17. Meanwhile, in all of Singapore, Australia and the Netherlands, it’s around 1 in 20 (or 5% of the total).

There are higher figures still in some developing countries, although it is not certain that data is complete. At the same time, the potential of digital lending may be particularly powerful in situations where the public and community library network is not dense.

It will be interesting to see how this graph evolves in future, in the light of the current crisis.

 

Find out more on the Library Map of the World, where you can download key library data in order to carry out your own analysis! See our other Library Stats of the Week! We are happy to share the data that supported this analysis on request.