IN DEPTH
What’s Hot? Summer reading in UK public libraries
Using the loan records from the UK’s Public Libraries reporting through the Nielsen LibScan* panel, Sara Mulryan examines the trends and analyses what we read over the long summer break.
CHILDREN are off school for extended periods and adults may change their reading habits from the regular daily commute when they also take a break. The long-term loan profile (see figure 1) since
2010 shows that the peak of library usage was in 2014 at just over 80 million loans tracked through the LibScan panel members. We break this down further to look at the ebb and flow of library usage throughout a year. Comparing loans in 2010 and 2019 (see
figure 2) shows the steep climb in lendings at the end of the school term, loans then level out in autumn with a dip in loans at the Christmas break. This makes summer one of the most important seasons for the libraries. So what genres and readers are driving this increase in loans and library usage? Let’s look at 2019 in more detail (see figure 3). Well the result is pretty conclusive! When the loans are broken down into their broad genres two stand out. Adult fiction shows a slight increase as we all cram our summer reading into two glorious weeks on the beach or back garden, but the children’s section as a whole sees activity increase by over 56 per cent in the four weeks after the end of school term, outstripping the increase for the adult loans. Loans of children’s titles account for 50 per cent more than adult fiction during this period leaping from two million to three million loans in four weeks (see figure 4). Within the children’s sector, fiction is by far and away the most popular genre to be borrowed, both for children and pre-school- ers, but it isn’t all fun and leisure reading.
36 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Sara Mulryan (
sara.mulryan@
nielsen.com) is Senior Account Manager at Nielsen Book Research.
The sub genre that sees the largest growth in loans is rather counter-intuitively, School Textbooks and Study Guides at a 95 per cent growth (albeit from a smaller base compared with the more popular genres) from 13 July to 10 August, along with the second highest Reference and Home Learning loans grow- ing 85 per cent indicating that youngsters are either engaging in learning activities during the holidays (garden safaris?) or pre- paring for the new school term. The drop-off in the older children’s reading loan patterns may indicate less engagement with the library and book-borrowing due to increased social activity and/or screen based activities (see figure 5).
June-July 2020
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