As office attendance has yet to rebound, central libraries are bringing people and energy back to city centers, as the Urban Libraries Council’s new data analysis shows

CONTACT: Evan Ottenfeld - eottenfeld@urbanlibraries.org

WASHINGTON, DC – In-person visits at major city central libraries have risen significantly, and those visits are driving patrons to local businesses and area attractions, according to a new data analysis from the Urban Libraries Council (ULC).

Using innovative anonymized data techniques, ULC looked at five flagship library branches in major cities across the country — Austin, Boston, Chicago, Jacksonville, and San Francisco — in order to assess how visits to the library influenced visits to other nearby community offerings.

While these libraries vary by size, population, and geography, they all show the same trend: downtown libraries are helping to draw people to city centers and are major contributors to neighborhood vitality, collectively driving over 864,000 trips to other neighborhood attractions before and after. On average, nearly one third of patrons to these libraries proceed to engage in economic and other activity after a library visit, a startling testament to their contribution to downtown economic potential.

“Our new analysis shows that downtown libraries are dynamic engines helping drive our cities into the future,” said Brooks Rainwater, President & CEO of the Urban Libraries Council. “City leaders should harness the momentum central libraries are creating, investing in their services and programs to keep bringing patrons – and needed economic activity – into the hearts of our communities.”

Read the analysis intro and full data visualization.

Among the key findings for each library:

• Austin’s downtown Central Library saw a notable rise from 2023 in 2024 visits, with its patrons collectively dining out in the neighborhood over 50,000 times pre- or post-library visit
• The Boston Public Library's Central Library in the Back Bay neighborhood drove 265,600 visits to other community attractions post-library visit
• The Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago, the city’s largest free public space, saw the strongest attendance in the middle of the week, with 123,000 of its patrons visiting on Wednesdays alone
• The average visitor to the Main Library in Jacksonville, Florida spent 164 minutes there, one of the longest visitor dwell times recorded among peer libraries
• Nearly 70,000 patrons at the San Francisco Main Library visited local leisure attractions like landmarks, outdoor sights, theaters, and bars before or after a visit

“The message of this data is both timely and undeniable,” said Femi Adelakun, Director of Research and Data and the report’s lead author. “These findings show that central libraries are becoming one of the more reliable contributors to downtown daytime foot-traffic and economic activity.”

Read the report’s intro blog and view the interactive data visualizations here.

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