Measuring travel time and distance in library use

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide a full understanding of library use patterns in their full temporal and spatial environment. By analyzing individuals' daily travel activity, this study seeks to measure the travel distance and travel time of library users in multi‐destination trip settings.Design/methodology/approachThe data set for analysis was collected from the Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive, which stores 79 household daily travel data sets. Daily activities of 409 people who visited public libraries were extracted from the Puget Sound Region data set.FindingsThrough the analysis, four library access patterns were identified: single‐destination, en route, base camp, and trip‐chaining trips. Only 20 percent of library users made single‐destination trips, while 80 percent of users made trips of a multi‐destination nature; these are depicted by the latter three listed patterns. In particular, 62.2 percent of the activities fell into the trip‐chaining travel pattern. Such a pattern is defined as “discretionary activities which include a library visit.” Findings indicate that although travel distance is still a constraint to library access, travel time is a more informative factor than travel distance for gaining a richer understanding of the nature of library visits.Originality/valueThis study develops new measurements of travel distance and time, Dlibrary and Tlibrary respectively, enabling more accurate measures of travel distance and time, and further supporting precise measurements of the portions of multi‐destination trips most relevant to library visits.