Changes in adults’ reading habits over the past fifty years

Abstract

More than fifty years have passed since the first nationwide representative research in Hungary, which mapped the adult population’s library usage habits besides their reading habits. The present article undertakes to examine one part of the latest data collection deriving from 2019, the changes in reading activity. Besides this, we have put the lists concerning the most frequently read authors of the researches conducted between 1964 and 2019 side by side. We can consider it to be traditional to compare the national list to the annual borrowing data of a library of a small town. One of the most important developments of the past decade was the Library Supplier Service System, with the help of which books and a wide range of library services become accessible for several people. We ask the question in our article if this supplier system operated nationally may have an effect on the latest data.