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61 million, 10,015,321, 98.7 percent, 16 million. What do statistics tell us? A great deal if you're looking at the right statistics in the right context. In this section you'll find statistical information on Illinois Public Libraries. By the way, the rest of the story on the statistics above? In order:

  • The number of patron visits made to Illinois public libraries annually (61 million)
  • The number of volumes in the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana libraries (10,015,321)
  • The percentage of all public libraries offering direct public access to the Internet in 2003 (98.7%)
  • The number of reference questions that Illinois librarians answer each year (16 million)

For over two decades, the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has compiled and published public library statistics under contract with the Illinois State Library.

The Illinois Public Library Statistics presents a statistical view of Illinois public libraries. The information is derived from data provided electronically by librarians and library directors on the Illinois Public Library Annual Report.

The Illinois Public Library Statistics is published in the Adobe Acrobat TM Portable Document Format (PDF) to maintain its formatting and graphics for optimum online viewing. PDF files can be viewed on any computer with Acrobat Reader, which is free and available for downloading from Adobe Systems.