Behavioral and Socioeconomic Differences among Users of the Internet Public Library from North Carolina

Many variables can affect how user populations behave online, including the environment in which people are accessing the Internet, their familiarity with the Internet in general, and their familiarity with the specific site that they are navigating. This study uses usage data gathered from the Internet Public Library combined with census data to analyze the behavior of visitors to the site from North Carolina. The census data shows that the behavior of user groups varies according to socioeconomic variables such as median household income and the percentage of the county population with a post-high school education. While libraries already make efforts to understand their user populations by examining available demographic information, the relationships revealed between variables in this study can aid in further understanding the behavior of population groups