Every Visit Tells a Story: Going Beyond Gate Counts on Library Census Day

Abstract

Our libraries are busy — but what do we know about who is walking through our doors, and how much time they spend with us? This question drove us to conduct a Census Day across all six York University library locations in 2025. Using a voluntary tap-in/tap-out tool linked to campus ID cards, we captured data for over 6,000 patrons across seventeen data points, including postal code, degree level, commute status, mother tongue, and age group. Notably, 94% of patrons were undergraduate students with an average stay of over 120 minutes. We share what we learned, what surprised us, and ideas for future assessment.

Inspired by Dillalogue & Koehn (2020) and modelled after McGill Libraries, our goal was to capture 80% of daily traffic while maintaining patron anonymity. Census Day also served as a catalyst for our LibQUAL+ survey, yielding more responses than in previous years. We incorporated Census Day data into a Metabase dashboard to correlate usage patterns with data from other platforms for a richer analysis. Two factors were critical to our success: full library staff involvement and a partnership with the Office of Institutional Planning & Analysis, enabling access to over 200 data points within privacy constraints