Number of Libraries in the United States
ALA Library Fact Sheet 1
There are an estimated 123,291 libraries of all kinds in the United States today. No annual survey provides statistics on all types of libraries.
Public, academic, and school library counts below come from four different surveys by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2005; Academic Libraries: 2004 (2006); A Brief Profile of America's Public Schools (2007) for the number of school library media centers in public schools and BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) schools; and the Schools and Staffing Survey, 1999-2000 (2002) for the number of school library media centers in private schools (more recent library media center data for private schools has yet to be released).
Figures for special libraries, armed forces libraries, and government libraries come from the American Library DirectoryTM 2007-2008, which is a two-volume set currently published by Information Today, Inc. Find out more about this publication at the Information Today, Inc. web site, at:
http://books.infotoday.com/directories/amerlib60.shtml
(Information Today, Inc., Attn: Customer Service, 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford NJ 08055-8750; telephone: 1-609-654-6266; fax: 1-609-654-4309; e-mail: custserv@infotoday.com; web site: http://americanlibrarydirectory.com).
|
Public libraries (administrative units) |
9,198 | ||
|
Centrals * |
9,040 |
||
|
Branches |
7,503 |
||
|
Buildings |
16,543 |
||
|
Academic Libraries |
3,653 | ||
|
Less than four year |
1,436 |
||
|
Four year and above |
2,217 |
||
|
School Libraries |
99,783 | ||
|
Public schools |
82,569 |
||
| Private schools |
17,054 |
||
|
BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) |
160 |
||
| Special Libraries * * |
9,181 |
| Armed Forces Libraries |
302 |
| Government Libraries |
1,174 |
| Total |
123,291 |
* The number of central buildings is different from the number of public libraries because some public library systems have no central building and some have more than one.
* * Special libraries include Corporate, Medical, Law, Religious, etc.
NOTE: Previous versions of this fact sheet can be accessed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine using the original URL <http://www.ala.org/library/fact1.html>. And this URL still works as a "shortcut" link to this web page.
April 2008
For more information on this or other fact sheets, contact the ALA Library Reference Desk by telephone: 800-545-2433, extension 2153; fax: 312-280-3255; e-mail: library@ala.org; or regular mail: ALA Library, American Library Association, 50 East Huron Street, Chicago, IL 60611-2795.