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More Canadians Go To Public Libraries Than Movie Theatres

More Canadians Go To Public Libraries Than Movie Theatres

February 8, 2020

In the spirit of the Oscars being presented this weekend in Hollywood, as well as the recent Gallup poll that found more Americans spent their leisure time inside libraries than they did going to movie theatres, let’s take a look at what the Canadian data shows.

Published data from Statistics Canada and from the provincial & territorial government departments/agencies responsible for public libraries show that public libraries receive more visits from Canadians than movie theatres do. The combined number of library visits from two provinces (Ontario and British Columbia) alone exceeds the number of visits to movies theatres in each of the survey years.

 

2014

2016

2018

Movie Theatres Attendance
(All of Canada)

99,393,310

100,287,943

96,032,391

Public Library Visits
(ON & BC only)

101,937,487

101,486,750

103,339,735

Sources:

Public Library Visits (2014, 2016, 2018)

 

2014

2016

2018

 
AB

18,457,165

21,091,176

-

Source
BC

31,717,887

29,879,900

30,365,135

Source
MB

4,847,866

4,753,824

4,643,896

Source
NB

1,909,402

2,082,881

-

Source
NL

-

-

-

NS

4,244,000

4,581,000

-

Source
NT

-

-

-

NU

-

-

-

ON

70,219,600

71,606,850

72,974,600

Source
PE

-

-

-

QC

26,384,629

28,169,404

-

Source
SK

5,761,253

4,545,000

-

Source
YK

-

-

-

Total

163,541,802

166,710,035

107,983,631

3 replies on “More Canadians Go To Public Libraries Than Movie Theatres”

  • Lara says:

    Why is there no data for NL and other places?

    • Librarianship.ca says:

      The data presented is based on information that has been published to the websites of Statistics Canada and the provincial and territorial government departments/agencies responsible for public libraries.

      Where no data is presented, it is because either the data for that reporting period is not yet available (2018) or the jurisdiction has not published data on library visits.

  • Alvin Schrader says:

    What I find most disappointing about such reports are the missing data. To what do we ascribe this? Irresponsible provincial and territorial agencies that should be reporting these figures? Can CULC do anything about this? Our profession (quite rightly) tries to push back whenever there are threatened budget cuts at provincial or municipal levels, but we don’t even provide, a little alone promote, the most basic of library user statistics to justify financial support. Am I missing something?

  • Leave a Reply to Lara Cancel reply
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