Bay Area library visits have sharply declined. But not in this tranquil suburb
Most libraries in the nine Bay Area counties have yet to see visits climb back to pre-pandemic levels. Large public library systems like San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland are all still seeing about 30% fewer visits per capita than they used to.
A handful of systems, though, have not only recovered — they've grown.
The data comes from the California State Library, which surveys each public library system each year. To calculate visits per capita, the number of visits at a library in a given fiscal year is divided by the population of that system's service area.
Declining visitation is virtually a universal problem. Almost no local public library system saw growth between the 2018-2019 and 2023-2024 fiscal years, the Chronicle found.
The numbers are in keeping with national trends, according to a report by the Urban Libraries Council, an advocacy group.
But those numbers aren't so bad when viewed in the context of other amenities post-pandemic.
'When you compare what's happening with libraries to what's going on in commercial (office) space, libraries are doing pretty well,' said Brooks Rainwater, the president of the Urban Libraries Council.
And though they're still not at pre-pandemic levels, visits per capita in the Bay Area and nationally have been slowly ticking up since their shutdown-induced low points, said Rainwater. He compared the slow but steady recovery of libraries to shifts in all parts of city life, like transit ridership, office visits, tourism and retail shopping, all of which still have yet to reach what they were before COVID.
And he expects the recovery will continue. Early data being collected for the council's 2025 report indicates that in-person library visits are up to about 75% of pre-pandemic levels.
Part of the picture — and a reason for hope — is the shifting role of what a library is within a community, a change that was happening even before the pandemic, Rainwater said. While an increasing number of people are borrowing ebooks instead of physically checking out books, libraries are also increasingly used as a 'third space' for people to gather, to work or to just hang out, he said.
'Literacy and books are always going to be our stock and trade,' he said, 'but libraries are reflective of community needs.'
That's a philosophy Anji Brenner, the city librarian at the Mill Valley Public Library, believes in wholeheartedly. The library, nestled among redwood trees and boasting floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the forest, a deck overlooking the nearby creek and even a wood-burning fireplace, is one of the few in the Bay Area to have fully recovered its visit numbers — an especially impressive feat given that its per capita visit rate was already one of the highest in the Bay Area.
'What's not to love about this place?' Brenner said.
Brenner said the recovery didn't happen automatically: Staff worked hard to adapt programming during and after the pandemic. That has meant, for example, everything from author talks to nature walks, and experimenting with the times those programs are offered: Weekends have proven very popular. The library also hired a more diverse staff, which Brenner said helped it to engage with more members of the community.
Likewise, Brenner also said that the demographics of visitors have shifted. Twenty- and thirty-somethings come to the library regularly now, a relatively new phenomenon, and teens, who were always reliable patrons, spend even more time there.
It also helps that Mill Valley is rich. Brenner noted that both the Mill Valley Library Foundation and Friends of the Mill Valley Library fundraise for the public library. In general, library visits were higher in wealthier places like Marin County.
Still, none of that matters if a library system isn't attuned to the community.
'You have to be grounded in who you're serving and why you're here,' she said. 'We want to bring joy to people's lives.'
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