Numbers Tell Story of Library Use; Take Survey to Give Your Opinion on Library Services
The library is filled with tales by the world’s best storytellers, but the library can tell a good story, too – about you, the library customer. It’s in the numbers.
For instance, you embrace convenience. In October, alone, 9,573 of you used the drive-through service lane at the Library Center to pick up or drop off your borrowed items. You use the drive-throughs at the Library Station, Willard and Republic branches with similar zeal. It’s one reason the Library Center and Library Station this year added an hour to Sunday drive-through service, now noon to 5 p.m. Brentwood Branch customers – your drive-through is coming in the planned renovation.
You turn to the library for enrichment. Circulation – that’s how many books and other materials you check out – is 13.7 per capita annually, based on a 275,174 population. (In October, alone, you checked out 179,668 books, and borrowed 9,198 e-books, e-audiobooks, etc.)
You’re comfortable with technology. In October you borrowed 9,198 e-media – e-books, etc. You borrowed 2,059 titles through Hoopla, a free service providing video, music and audiobooks through thelibrary.org/digital. And you made 67,434 searches through thelibrary.org.
Annually, you make 7.3 visits to the library branches per capita. In addition, the library sees .5 program attendees per capita.
And annually, use of Internet-enabled public computers in the libraries is 2.1 users per capita. The numbers for circulation, visits, program attendance and Internet computer use made the library district a 2014 Star Library by the Library Journal’s Index of Public Library Service. It earned three of five stars when compared with 29 other U.S. public libraries with similar annual budgets.
The index is one indication of a library’s reach, but also helps the staff evaluate library use and plan for the future. You can help guide the direction by responding to the public survey on thelibrary.org and on dedicated iPads in the library branches. You can always drop us a line, too. We want to know what you’d like to see.
Find this article at http://thelibrary.org/blogs/article.cfm?aid=3523&lid=63