There are almost 3 times as many public libraries in Canada than McDonald's restaurants - 3153 libraries, including branches.

According to LibraryNet, as of April 7, 2000, there were 3153 "service points" (includes branches and bookmobiles) in Canada. ["Internet Connectivity in Public Libraries" http://www.schoolnet.ca/ln-rb/e/connect/table4.html, viewed 4 Apr. 01] -- Number of McDonalds in Canada: Approx. 1100 "* There are now more than 1,100 McDonald's Restaurants in Canada, including British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan , Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, North West Territories, and Yukon." [McDonalds Canada Corporate Web site: http://www.mcdonalds.com/countries/canada/corporate/index.html , viewed 4 Apr. 01]

Public libraries are the number one point of on-line access for people without Internet connections at home, school or work.

According to Statistics Canada; http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/000519/d000519b.htm], this is still true - although the "other" category of friends, relatives, and Internet cafes rose to within 0.4% of public libraries.

100% of public libraries now offer access to the Internet.

The 100% figure is of those interested and 97.6% of the service points overall.
[http://www.schoolnet.ca/ln-rb/e/connect/table4.html]

More Canadians visit libraries than take part in golf, hockey, baseball, and swimming combined.

[http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/People/Culture/arts36a.htm]. 6,688,000 and 5,760,000 respectively - see the URL above and http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/People/Culture/arts16.htm for details.

Reference librarians in public libraries answer more than 350,000 questions weekly, or 18.3 million per year. Standing single file, (presuming about a metre of personal space per person), the line of questioners in a single year would stretch along the entire Trans-Canada highway from St. Johns to Victoria and all the way back again!

(7604 km in each direction, for a total of 15,208 km.)

A 1999 study showed that elementary school students with above average reading skills tended to start going to public libraries at an earlier age, go to public libraries more often, and attend more library programs than students with below average reading skills.

Note that almost 20% of the money spent on materials in public libraries goes toward children's materials, and almost 4,000,000 people attended the programs (many of them children's programs) of Canadian public libraries in 1999. [ The Significance of the Public Library on a Child's Reading Achievement. Barrett, Karin. Available via ERIC as ERIC document # ED427307.]

A 1998 survey showed that North Americans expect libraries to be needed in the future, despite the increased availability of information on the computer.

The total revenue from taxes, donations, etc. at all of Canada's urban public libraries in 1998 was around $528 million. If gamblers had just take one out of every 15 dollars spent on gambling and given it to the library, they would have doubled library budgets!

"Three-quarters of households (77%) reported spending some money on at least one charity or government-run gambling activity, according to the 1998 Survey of Household Spending. Among such households, average spending rose from $425 in 1996 to $460 in 1998." --- in comparison, about 50% of Canadians are registered borrowers at public libraries, and all Canadians spent via municipal, provincial, and federal taxes around $28per capita on libraries.

"In 1999, $8.1 billion was wagered on some form of non-charity gambling activity, three times the $2.7 billion of seven years earlier." There are gambling stats at the following StatsCan Daily announcement: [http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/000308/d000308e.htm].

In general, Canadian Internet users tend to be younger, wealthier, and better educated than those Canadians who do not use the Net. Only 28 percent of Internet users had, however, bought something over the Internet in 2000.

RELATED LINKS: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/010326/d010326a.htm

3,951,926 people attended library programs in 1999. That's almost as many people as attended Toronto Blue Jays games during their All-time American League Attendance record-setting year, 1993 (4,057,947).

Source: http://www.skydome.ca/

Number of library programs offered: 108,325 Number of NHL games in regular season (N.A.): 2,460 Thus, public libraries offered 44 times more programs than the NHL did games - not counting the play-offs.

If the 153,914,378 books circulated by Canadian public libraries each year were stacked on top of each other they would be 7000 times higher than the CN Tower in Toronto.

Total circulation for libraries serving populations over 50,000: 153,914,378 If an average book is 2.5 cm thick, then the pile of books would be 3909 km high The CN Tower: The CN Tower is 553.33 m (1,815 ft, 5 inches) tall or the equivalent of 5 1/2 football fields stacked end-to-end. http://www.cntower.ca/ Thus, the 153,914,378 books at an average of 2.5 cm thick, would stack up to be over 7000 times the height of the CN Tower.

If you took the stack of 153,914,378 books above and shelved the books as a library does, the resulting shelf of books would be almost twice the length of the Great Wall of China!

The Great Wall of China: is 2,260km long (http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Great_Wall_of_China.html)

If the average cost of a book is 20.00: the value of the total number of books circulated is in excess of 3,000,000,000 dollars! Total revenue for public libraries in 1999 (CALUPL stats) was 528,000,000. Thus, Canadian public libraries saved Canadians $3,000,000,000 dollars and required only $528,000,000 to do it.

Note: This doesn't take into account the 47,000,000 items that were used in house.

"… In answer to the question "Where would you be most likely to use the Internet if you could go to a public place and get access?" 53% of respondents without home access chose the library (as compared to 10% who chose school, 6% who chose Internet café, 3% who chose community centre, 3% who chose government office, 3% who chose shopping mall, and 3% who chose other)."

LibraryNet Monthly, December 1999 http://www.schoolnet.ca/ln-rb/e/lnmonth/lndec.html