Answer: According to information compiled by our Library Development section, 379,206 Alaska residents had library cards in 2007. This number is subject to a few cautions according to Patience Frederiksen, our public library statistician. She notes:
One odd thing about this data is that many of the libraries do not have an online catalog and some do not give out library cards at all, so I gave those libraries their entire population as library card holders.People interested in other statistics about Alaska's libraries should check out the Alaska Public Library Statistics page at http://library.alaska.gov/dev/plstats/plstats.html. The statistics web page is under revision and the FY2006 and FY2007 statistics should appear in January.
Another odd thing is that many of the libraries give out temporary seasonal cards to tourism, cruise ship, and fish canning and processing employees, so sometimes they give out more cards than they have residents living in their local service area.
