Austin library card numbers up since Central Library opening

Thanks to the 2-year-old, state-of-the-art Central Library, more Austinites have a library card than ever before, according to city data.

The total number of Austin Public Library cardholders has increased by about 68,000 — an 11% rise — since the Central Library opened in October 2017. To date, about 685,000 people have an Austin library card, said Roosevelt Weeks, director of the Austin Public Library.

To give a little more perspective, prior to the Central Library opening, the system issued an average of 2,300 new cards per month, library spokeswoman Rachel Nguyen said. After the new library opened, it has been issuing about 3,600 cards per month.

"It's a beautiful thing to see. We're averaging about 100,000 people coming through our doors a month," Weeks said of the Central Library location. "And we love it. We absolutely love it."

The former Faulk Central Library that it replaced saw about 34,000 visitors a month, library officials said.

After four years of construction, the Central Library on West Cesar Chavez Street opened in late 2017. At nearly 200,000 square feet, it cost $125 million to build and is double the size of the Faulk Central Library. Voters approved a $90 million bond for its construction in 2006, and Austin City Council voted in 2013 to break ground on the project. It was funded with the bond plus about $30 million from city property sales and other sources. The cost later rose by about an additional $5 million.

"We're seeing the growth, not only here at Central, but across the system as a whole," Weeks said, pointing to the system's outreach efforts to bring more people into all its libraries.

Systemwide library attendance in Austin jumped from roughly 261,500 visitors a month in 2017 to 290,660 in 2018, library officials said. It rose to about 300,000 in 2019.

The numbers translate to revenue for the library system as well. The Central Library's gift shop has so far brought in about $250,000 a year, parking revenue brings in about $450,000 a year, and people who rent out library meeting rooms provide about $250,000 a year, Weeks said.

One major factor in boosting cardholder numbers is that Austin school district students are now automatically signed up for a library card when they enroll, though parents still have the option to opt out, Weeks said. In the 2018-19 school year, the Austin library system signed up 25,000 students. The library system has implemented automatic opt-in for the upcoming school year and has so far already signed up about 45,000 students.

"If this rate of opt-in holds for the rest of registration, we hope to sign up a total of about 73,000 AISD students" by the end of the school year, Nguyen said.

The Central Library's biggest drawback, Weeks said, is that there's not enough parking and that people have to pay for it after an hour.

"The Central Library has been a tremendous draw, but there's still a lot of people who don't like to travel downtown," Weeks said.

Weeks said he wants librarygoers to have a great experience, no matter which Austin public library they visit.

"Hopefully once they get there, they get hooked, and they want to keep coming back," Weeks said. "And that's what we're seeing — a lot of repeat customers coming back."