Canadians, Public Libraries and the Information Highway: Final Report

1. Introduction

1.1 Background

Like many other types of institutions, public libraries are being influenced directly and indirectly by the ubiquitous information highway -- both in terms of their mandates and activities as well as the broader environment in which they are operating. While its impact is not well understood, it is clear that the information highway is fundamentally changing the lives of both citizens and our institutions with increasingly inter-dependant social and economic consequences.

From the perspective of public libraries, the impact of the information highway is important to understand as it is altering much of the landscape around which they provide services to Canadians. At a broad level, the impacts could range from changing what activities Canadians are participating in to redefining our traditional notions of access to services and programs.

Before trying to better understand what impact these changes will have, it is important to know how often Canadians are using public libraries today, what they are using them for, and which activities they consider to be more important than others. Already, for example, public libraries represent an important point of access for Canadians to access new technologies and services such as the Internet, or to get training on how to use them. Likewise, against a backdrop of reduced public funds, public libraries are increasingly having to compete against other services or find alternative revenue sources. With this knowledge, public libraries across Canada will be in a better position to look towards the future.

1.2 Study Objectives

In its design, this study was commissioned by the Canadian Library Association (CLA) on behalf of an informal consortium made up of Provincial and Territorial libraries, the National Library of Canada, Industry Canada, Association pour l'avancement des sciences et techniques de la documentation (ASTED) and CLA to support two distinct, but complimentary objectives.

• First, it was designed to fill an information gap, and provide information on how Canadians are using public libraries across the country.
• Second, the study was designed to assist federal and provincial governments as part of their broader goal of connecting all public libraries in Canada to the information highway by 1999 and to examine the means by which to make "connectivity" sustainable over the longer-term.

It is within this context that Ekos Research's Information Highway and Canadian Communications Household project proved to be an appropriate research vehicle to achieve these goals. Launched in 1997, the Information Highway and Canadian Communications Household project was developed as a partnership between the public and private sectors, and was designed to provide information on diverse activities and uses of the information highway.

The specific objectives of this study are as follows:

• to determine through a national statistical survey the frequency with which the Canadian public uses public library services;
• to understand what purposes public libraries are being used for;
• to understand attitudes of Canadians towards the traditional roles of public libraries, and emerging roles in different areas;
• to determine how different services provided by public libraries are perceived by Canadians in terms of importance;
• to examine attitudes of Canadians towards the funding of public libraries; and
• to situate issues facing public libraries within the broader context of the information highway.

1.3 Methodology

The results in this study were drawn together on the basis of a mail-back survey that was designed to build on the results from the first wave of the Information Highway and Canadian Communications Household study. The rationale for a mail-back format was to enable asking "diary" type questions about recent activities which are typically more difficult to answer during a telephone survey.

The survey instrument was designed by Ekos Research in close consultation with an informal consortium made up of the Provincial and Territorial libraries, the National Library of Canada, Industry Canada , the Association pour l'avancement des sciences et techniques de la documentation (ASTED) and CLA as well as its Technical Advisors. Some questions in the survey were also designed to build on earlier related research that Ekos Research had undertaken in relation to the Reading in Canada 1991 study.

Prior to its full implementation, the mail-back instrument was pre-tested in December 1997 with a limited number of individuals to ensure that the survey would achieve its objectives effectively.

Revisions to the instrument were made following the pre-test in order to improve the flow and understandability of certain questions, as well as the ease in completing the questionnaire. The final versions of the English and French questions contained in the mail- back instruments are presented in Appendices A and B. The actual survey instrument was sent to respondents in a booklet form.

The mail-back instrument was distributed to a sub-sample of the original 3,522 Canadians who had participated in the first wave of the study -- a telephone survey undertaken in September 1997 -- and agreed to a follow-up interview. The original sampling frame from the first telephone survey was based on a stratified random sample of Canadians 18 and over.

In total, 2,649 participants from the original sample were sent a copy of the mail-back instrument in February, 1998. Participants were sent a reminder card shortly after the initial mailing, followed by a full second mail out in March.

The final results are based on 1,271 completed surveys received between February and April, 1998. This represents an overall response rate of 48 per cent of the sample of potential respondents. Another two per cent were returned due to a change of address.

1.4 Notes on Interpreting the Results

When reviewing the findings, a few things should be kept in mind:

• As with most surveys, questions which involve reporting activities over a given time period should be interpreted with a degree of caution. This is necessary given that respondents often recall undertaking activities more recently than is actually the case. This can occur, for example, when a respondent may recall having been to a public library in the past year when in fact it was actually 18 months earlier.
• Similarly, there are surveys that were returned with different questions unanswered. In a number of these cases, it was clear that a blank response was intended to mean that the respondent had not participated in a particular activity. In other cases, it is clear that the respondent had skipped a question in its entirety. For the purposes of this study, the findings for any particular question excluded respondents who did not complete the question.
• Throughout the report, breakdowns by sub-groups have typically been reported only if the differences among responses are statistically significant at the five percent level or above.
• The margin of error for the overall results is ± 2.7 per cent, indicating the level of precision of the responses nineteen times out of twenty. Larger margins of error are associated with subgroups of the sample.

The findings in the survey were weighted along age, gender, and regional lines to ensure that the sample is representative of the general public. As well, the findings were also weighted according to Internet usage to ensure that the sample was similar to the original sample in terms of its composition of Internet "users" and "non-users".

A breakdown of the final weighted sample is summarized in Table 1.1.

1.5 Report Organization

The rest of this report is organized in four additional chapters.

• Canadians' use of public libraries is examined in Chapter Two.
• In Chapter Three, the public's attitudes towards the role of public libraries is presented.
• Funding related issues are examined in Chapter Four.

Data tables are attached in Appendix C.