Surveys reveals 70% of adults use library

THE Irish are a nation of book worms, a new survey confirms.

Just under 70% of all adults have used the public library service while 88% of all 16 to 19-year-olds are current members.

Overall, 94% of users of the country’s 374 libraries, including a 30-strong mobile fleet, expressed a high level of satisfaction.

The research was conducted by the library council, An Chomhairle Leabharlanna. Its director Norma McDermott said: “The clear message from this important research was Irish people are using their public libraries more frequently and for a greater variety of reasons than ever before.”

However, the TNS/MRBI poll also showed that people who had not used the library in recent years, were not fully aware of the various services on offer.

Frequency of visits to a public library was also very high with more than one million users doing so once a month, or more.

Unsurprisingly, most people, at 79%, visited a public library to borrow or return items with 14% using them to study.

Meanwhile, the 1,400 computer terminals in the country’s libraries have a 99% usage.

The main reason people gave, at 36%, for not visiting a library was “no time” while 13% obtained reading material from elsewhere and 10% are simply not interested.

The poll suggested the top three factors to attract people back to libraries were stock and a change in the opening times which all recorded a 19% rating.

Environment Minister Martin Cullen said the survey results provided a positive endorsement of the significant progress made to modernise the library service. Since 1999, 27 new libraries were built.