Library Research Service

Pew Research Center recently published the results of its Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018 study. Pew surveyed US teens aged 13-17 to gather information about their use and views of social media, providing an update to a similar study published in 2015. For the first time, Facebook is no longer the most popular social media platform among America’s teenagers. About half (51%) of teens surveyed report that they use Facebook, down from the 7 in 10 (71%) who said the same in 2015. In 2018, higher percentages of the teens surveyed say they use YouTube (85%), Instagram (72%), and Snapchat...

The World Bank recently published the 2018 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals.  One of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is to “ensure inclusive and equitable education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” A key concrete measure being tracked for the project is “total enrollment in pre-primary education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the total population of official pre-primary education age.” The map above displays the rate of pre-primary enrollment by country based on the most recent data reported between the years 2011-2016. The highest percentages of enrollment in pre-primary education do not necessarily correspond to the...

Library Jobline, LRS’s website for library job postings and resources, broke its own record for the number of jobs posted in 2017 while the number of job seekers and job posters continued to rise. Data collected from the Library Jobline website are highlighted in the most recent Fast Facts report. In 2017 employers posted 701 jobs to Library Jobline, an average of 13 new jobs a week. January was Jobline’s busiest month, with 73 new jobs posted. Similar to 2016, about two-thirds (67%) of the jobs posted were located in Colorado. However, the percentage of full-time jobs posted saw a big...

LRS recently released the latest version of Quotable Facts about Colorado Libraries, a booklet containing data and statistics about public, school, and academic libraries in Colorado. The booklet focuses on libraries working with and for their patrons, broken down into three sections: libraries working for access, knowledge, and community. Public, school, and academic libraries circulated more than 22 items for each person in the state in the past year, which provided Coloradans with access to about 123 million items overall. More than 1 in 10 Colorado households do not have access to a computer or the internet at home, but all...

Pew Research Center recently updated a report delving into the characteristics of the quarter of American adults who say that they haven’t read a book in the past year. This includes reading all or part of a book, in any format (print, electronic, or audiobook). Education seems to impact how often American adults read books. About 2 in 5 (37%) adults with a high school degree or less reported that they did not read a book in the past year. This makes them about five times more likely to be a non-book reader than college graduates (7%). Similarly, only about 1...

The International Literacy Association regularly conducts a survey of literacy leaders to find out what topics in literacy are trending and which topics are the most important. The most recent survey was open from August to September 2017. It had 2,097 responses representing 91 countries and territories. Classroom teachers made up the largest portion of respondents (27%). The survey asks respondents to rank 17 topics as a “hot” or trendy topic, and rank the same topics on importance. “Early literacy” and “strategies for differentiating instruction” were the only two topics ranked in the top five as both a hot topic and...