Statistics: Pew Research Center

My Search:

I used the Pew Research Center to search for statistics about public libraries and their communities. I used the search box in top right corner of the homepage.

My results are returned by relevance and while Pew doesn’t give a number on how many there are, I can tell by looking through the results that there are more than enough (at least nine pages!).

My Best Result:

What I learned, Content:

I chose the first result, a study “How Americans Value Public Libraries”. 

 The report has a wealth of statistics about the Americans view their public libraries. One statistic states that “94% of Americans say that “having a public library improves the quality of life in a community”. What good news!

What I learned, Searching:

Searching the Pew Research Center website is pretty straight forward. I suggest users treat it like they are searching on Google. I typed in my search a little wary—surely there was more to the search than the tiny box up in the corner! But it worked nicely and returned very relevant results.

Reflection:

I enjoyed searching the Pew Research Center’s website. It’s very user-friendly and pleasing to look at. Even though it is free, I feel completely comfortable with the information I find on it. Pew is a trustworthy name and it is nice that they offer their research online for free.

Reference:
Zickuhr, Kathryn, Lee Rainie, Kristen Pucell, Maeve Duggan. "How Americans Value Public Libraries in their Communities." Pew Research Center (2013). http://tinyurl.com/oyswztg.