ULC President & CEO Brooks Rainwater was recently quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle article about the rate of library visits pre- and post-pandemic:

The numbers are in keeping with national trends, according to a report by the Urban Libraries Council, an advocacy group.

But those numbers aren’t so bad when viewed in the context of other amenities post-pandemic.

“When you compare what’s happening with libraries to what’s going on in commercial (office) space, libraries are doing pretty well,” said Brooks Rainwater, the president of the Urban Libraries Council.

And though they’re still not at pre-pandemic levels, visits per capita in the Bay Area and nationally have been slowly ticking up since their shutdown-induced low points, said Rainwater. He compared the slow but steady recovery of libraries to shifts in all parts of city life, like transit ridership, office visits, tourism and retail shopping, all of which still have yet to reach what they were before COVID.

And he expects the recovery will continue. Early data being collected for the council’s 2025 report indicates that in-person library visits are up to about 75% of pre-pandemic levels.

Part of the picture — and a reason for hope — is the shifting role of what a library is within a community, a change that was happening even before the pandemic, Rainwater said. While an increasing number of people are borrowing ebooks instead of physically checking out books, libraries are also increasingly used as a “third space” for people to gather, to work or to just hang out, he said.

Literacy and books are always going to be our stock and trade,” he said, “but libraries are reflective of community needs.”

Read the full article.