Show how your library is really used, without watching anyone

The job to be done

You run a public institution that has to justify its space, its hours and its budget, yet the things that prove a library’s worth are the hardest to count. The same questions come back every budget round: How many people visit, beyond the ones who borrow something? When are we busy, and when is the building near-empty? Do our opening hours and staffing match when people actually come? Which areas (children’s section, study spaces, reading room, café, event space) get used, and which sit idle? Did that author talk, exhibition or reading programme bring people in? And how do we show all of this to the municipality and other funders without surveilling the public we serve? That last constraint is non-negotiable: whatever you measure has to be private beyond doubt.

How library people counting works without cameras

Bumbee Labs counts visitors over the library’s existing Wi-Fi. No cameras, nothing that records a face or identifies a reader, and usually no new hardware: often the access points already in place are enough, with one or two added to cover an entrance or a separate floor. Visitors appear only as anonymous counts, the signals run through a statistical engine, and the result reaches you as a dashboard or as exportable reports for your board and funders, so the same system answers both a civic institution’s anti-surveillance expectations and its duty to report usage to those who fund it. For a public body this is the decisive point: it is the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority. You get the usage evidence you need while honouring the privacy and trust a public library is meant to stand for.

How Wi-Fi people counting works →

What data you get

• Total visits: the real number through the doors, beyond loans and logins, on adjustable time scales from short intervals to months.
• Opening-hours and staffing demand: visits by hour, day, week and season, so hours and rosters follow real demand rather than habit.
• Space utilisation by zone, children’s area, study spaces, reading room, event space, café: which areas are busy, which are quiet, and when.
• Dwell time: how long people stay, overall and by area (a quick reference look versus an afternoon of study).
• Peaks, quiet periods and trends: for planning quiet hours, events and seasonal programmes.
• Programme and event impact: the attendance lift from talks, exhibitions and reading initiatives, as fact-based evidence.

→ Browse the full metric catalogue and delivery formats

Privacy you can stand behind

For a library, privacy is not a feature. It is part of the mission. The method is anonymous and aggregated by design: no one is identified, no profiles are built. So you can report usage to the municipality with confidence, and when patrons ask how (and whether) they are being watched, the answer is simple. They aren’t.

Proof from other public buildings

The same approach is already proven in other public-facing buildings, where it shows how people use each area and how events bring them in, turning a sense of a place’s worth into figures its funders accept. For a library that is precisely the evidence behind visits, space use and event turnout.

See how a cultural venue uses the data →

Where this fits

Libraries share the public-sector privacy bar (and often the same funders) as museums & cultural venues, and they sit inside the wider public realm covered by footfall analytics for cities & municipalities. And when the measurement is bought through a tender, public procurement of people counting lists the requirements worth writing in.