“Ten years from now, U.S. public libraries will circulate more than a billion print books each year” —Walt Crawford

Created by gwern on 2011-08-12; known on 2021-09-01; judged right by stepan on 2021-09-12.

• gwern estimated 85% on 2011-08-12
• gwern said “source: http://walt.lishost.org/2011/08/cites-insights-118-september-2011-available/” on 2011-08-12
• gwern said “will be judged against IMLS survey of public libraries; 2008, 2.2b circulated: http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/06062011/smartest-readers” on 2011-08-12
• gwern said “for in +35 years: http://predictionbook.com/predictions/2999” on 2011-08-12
• JoshuaZ estimated 75% on 2011-08-12
• themusicgod1 estimated 53% on 2016-10-04
• pranomostro estimated 80% and said “Couldn’t find any recent numbers on this, does anyone have an updated value for this?” on 2019-01-03
• Baeboo estimated 97% and said “1.97 billion reported physical circulation in 2016, see https://www.imls.gov/sites/default/files/fy2016_pls_data_file_documentation.pdf.” on 2019-01-04
• stepan estimated 100% on 2021-07-10
• JoshuaZ said “I’m having trouble finding up to date data on this. Almost certainly true but I can’t find any source to back it up. Can someone locate the numbers here? ” on 2021-09-01
• stepan said “Table S2: https://www.imls.gov/sites/default/files/2021-08/fy19-pls-results.pdf” on 2021-09-12
• stepan   judged this prediction right on 2021-09-12.