By Harry Constable
The truth isn’t as popular as fiction. Whether it’s a murder mystery or meeting the love of your life – the world of novels has never been more popular.
From diapers to dentures, fiction still turns the most pages according to Wollongong City Libraries Lindsey Carapella.
“So last year there were over a million physical items loaned last financial year and about 365,000 digital items,” said Carapella.“So that could be e-magazines, audiobooks; so in that sense our loaning, it’s on the increase.”
Readership numbers are thriving and showing no signs of slowing down according to Wollongong Libraries statistics, with borrowing numbers growing year on year since 2020. And this is not only with physical books but e-books and audiobooks too, growing by 500 per cent in the past five years.
“We’ve got four or five different platforms that customers can use for free, that we offer e-items for,” said Carapella.”For e-audiobooks, it was around 168,000 loans for the year. And one particular app called Borrowbox, we had 116,000 audiobooks loaned for the financial year.”
But with digital books on the rapid rise, are physical books losing their place in the modern world? Well not according to Carapella.
“I would say it’s on a steady increase (physical readership), especially since COVID,” she said.
Wollongong City Libraries statistics prove that readership is, in fact, on the increase and that people are flocking to their local library to get their hands on as many stories as they can.
There is some cause for concern with the demographic numbers, however, with young adults dropping slightly on previous years and being dwarfed by the number of adults and over-65 borrowers at the library; adults being their biggest-borrowing demographic and Adult Fiction the most-borrowed genre – closely followed by picture books.
Readership in the local community seems to be alive and well with both hardcover books and the electronic space of digital and audio books thriving.
Perhaps reading in the traditional sense may not be what it once was but people are always consuming content whether physical or digital and, in turn, constantly reading.
Featured image: The best adventures are often between the covers. Picture: Wollongong Library
