Link to November 16 SFweekly.com post, "Want evidence of the decline of print media? Go to the library." (via Resource Shelf)Excerpt: In 2009, print magazines lost advertisers, readers, and now, it seems, the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. This year, the branch will spend about $385,000 on periodicals, down nearly $75,000 from the year before. The reason is no surprise: magazine closings, and a switch to online databases.
With the decline of the magazine industry, libraries — long temples to all things printed — have become veritable old folks' facilities for traditional print media, a final home for 20th-century relics who are slowly dying off. A decade ago, the San Francisco Public Library system had about 15,000 print subscriptions. This year, its active collection, with at least 400 titles dropped, has fallen to fewer than 11,000, the lowest in five years, according to Main Branch chief Kathy Lawhun.
Overall, though, I don't think public libraries, taken as a whole, are quite ready to take on the role of old folks' home for print.
According to Wisconsin Public Library Statistics, the number of periodical titles owned by the state's 388 public libraries has declined by 6% since 2000. Hardly a precipitous drop.
50,102 in 2008.
51,002 in 2007.
51,331 in 2006.
49,417 in 2005.
49,770 in 2004.
53,164, in 2003.
52,404 in 2002.
52,801 in 2001.
53,213 in 2000.
And there's even been an overall gain in number of print volumes owned: from 18,637,370 in 2000 to 20,021,463 in 2008, an increase of 7.4%.
Yes, we all want to change the world, as the Beatles sang, but change in libraries is more likely to be evolutionary than revolutionary.
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