A couple of random facts

This was posted as 'Fun Library Facts' on the home page of my Advanced Management of Library Systems class. A 6 page report on how "libraries stack up." Here are a couple of the facts that I found interesting.

1. Libraries worldwide have $31 billion in expenditures annually. Libraries in the US have $14 billion in expenditures annually.
**US libraries exceed the US spending on videos and athletic footwear, and are close to the level spent by businesses on magazine advertising.

2. US Public libraries circulate 1,811,500,000 items per year.

3. US Public library cardholders outnumber Amazon customers by almost 5 to 1. Amazon has 30,000,000 customers, public libraries have 148,000,000 cardholders.

4. US libraries circulate about the same number of items as FedEx ships per day - more than 5.3 million items per day.

5. Five times more people visit US public libraries each year than attend US professional and college football, basketball, baseball and hockey games combined.
US public library visits: 1,116,000,000
US sports attendance: 203,700,000

I love interesting statistics!! WHOOT WHOOT!! =)

(side note: Most of these stats were researched in 2003, so they are a bit outdated. However, they are still pretty impressive!!!)