While now largely forgotten, rental libraries (commercial circulating libraries) have played a major role in book distribution in twentieth-century U.S. The Booklovers Library, a rental library that Seymour Eaton started in Philadelphia in 1900, rapidly established rental outlets in 50 cities and circulated millions of books per year. Eaton soon proposed placing 10,000 rental book … Continue reading circulation from rental and public libraries
Here’s a short paper on public library media formats, mainly based on various previous posts. To support Table 1 in the paper, I’ve posted some aggregate data on U.S. public library holdings by media item category, fiscal years 1989 to 2005. Did you know that in 1915, the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana, had a … Continue reading non-book items in U.S. public libraries
Hard-working volunteers have recently entered Thomas Jefferson’s personal library into LibraryThing. The U.S. Congress purchased Jefferson’s library in 1815 to replace to the library Congress lost when the British Army burned the Capitol in 1814.[1] Thus Jefferson’s library on LibraryThing documents the library that formed Congress’s new library in 1815. Although Jefferson was at the … Continue reading transforming Thomas Jefferson’s library into the Library of Congress
In a sample of 275 U.S. public library systems in 2005, the circulation of audio books recorded on cassette tape was 1.3 times the circulation of audio books recorded on CDs.[1] As late as 2005, many audio book borrowers apparently owned audio cassette players. For music albums, the last year that cassette tape sales exceeded … Continue reading consumer technology transitions
Previously I estimated that, from 1985 to 2004, video circulation from U.S. public libraries grew 340%, compared to 140% growth in video rentals from video rental businesses. This estimate depended on a sub-estimate that video circulation from public libraries in 2004 was 15% of total library item circulation. Data that I did not previously consider … Continue reading understanding libraries' video success