Why measure library attendance?
In October 2023, the French Ministry of Culture, AFNOR, the Public Information Library (Bpi) is organizing a day dedicated to measurement of attendance in libraries and its role in performance and management indicators. It allows us to better understand how libraries are used, which services are the most popular and how to improve them or distribute them within the territorial fabric.
Moreover, and this is not insignificant, this data is essential to justify budgets and obtain funding.
Measuring attendance is often complicated for several reasons:
heterogeneity of the data collected (number of entries, number of entrants, per day, week or month, occasionally or annually, etc.).
a heterogeneity of budgets which does not allow us to equip ourselves with an automatic and uniform counting system.
The annual reports requested by the State are often time-consuming for the networks and not even carried out by 50% of the 15,000 libraries in France.
Yet it is essential for the national management of public reading.
Which attendance measurement indicators to follow for your library?
Certain key indicators deserve particular attention and can be observed with precise granularity:
Number of entries per day, per week, per month, per year.
Number of entrants - unlike entries, this figure is more complex because it does not take into account multiple entries.
Evolution of the occupancy rate during the day or during the week
Average presence time on site
Beyond these essential indicators for measuring attendance, we can also imagine other indicators that can be correlated:
Use of different services (book loans, use of computer equipment, events, etc.)
Number of book borrowings
Number of returning visitors
NPS (net promoter score), the location recommendation indicator
User satisfaction via studies or rating systems.
How to equip an entire territory without breaking the bank?
💡 To respond to these challenges and equip all territories, we have developed our offer so that it adapts to all libraries: from the smallest to the largest !
Whether you need a simple manual counting system over a short period or a high-performance annual automatic system, all attendance data will then be homogenized by our administration portal and easily exportable and usable.