Posted on June 16, 2020 at 1:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

You probably don’t need a study to know that your local library is seeing more traffic, regardless of whether it’s physically open, because of stay-at-home orders and pandemic fears.

Still, NPR’s reporting from individual libraries and the OverDrive system as a whole offers some interesting insights.

For instance, virtual checkouts are of course up — but the demand for children’s books has more than doubled, and their weekday checkouts have exceeded that of adult nonfiction since late March.

Librarians also told NPR that while they’re grateful for the increased interest, the closures have raised some concerns about equal access.

Many have tried to balance that with health mandates, such as by still providing (or even expanding) their wireless internet.

Read more on NPR and tell us how your library compares to those in Seattle and Washington, DC, which were featured in the article.

And in other library news … the Internet Archive has ended its National Emergency Library early.

Four major publishers filed a lawsuit against the program on June 1, alleging copyright infringement. 

The National Emergency Library was intended to run through June 30; the site is still up but says it “will continue to be available after June 16th through traditional controlled digital lending.”

Related posts 

Categories: Today in Books

Comments
There are no comments yet.
Add Comment

* Indicates a required field