by Joe Miller,
Director of Development
We recently wrapped up our fiscal year at Pocahontas County Libraries and Visitor Information Centers. That’s a time when we like to take stock of how our patrons used our libraries.
The short answer is that you used it a lot.
We had a total of 38,530 visits across our five libraries. Just a little under two in five of those visits happened at McClintic, with the remaining spread fairly evenly across the remaining four branches.
Around 2,500 of those patrons were visitors—people from outside Pocahontas County stopping by for information. The Durbin branch is especially popular with visitors, with tourists accounting for about 30% of its total attendance.
You all really like to read. Patrons checked out 73,120 print items over the course of the year. Pocahontas County library patrons also read 4,313 e-books and 1,568 e-magazines through Libby. That works out to about 10 books or magazines for every county resident.
But reading wasn’t the only thing people were doing at libraries this year. Our computers and Wi-Fi were used more than 11,000 times. We hosted 433 meetings. And programs across the different libraries drew more than 8,000 people. That last figure includes our summer reading program. This year, several branches hosted twice as many summer readers as last year!
We are also quite fortunate to have a lot of people in our area who actively work to make our libraries a little nicer. All told, residents volunteered 333 hours of their time to help with things like spring cleaning, caring for the landscaping around our buildings and helping with book sales.
Many more of you have donated reading materials, food and toiletries to distribute to those who find themselves in a tight spot, and money that helps keep our staff paid and the lights on.
In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about how we make use of all this data—beginning next week with a discussion of how our librarians decide what materials to order.
In the meantime, thank you all for visiting us over the past year. You are—quite literally—the reason we exist. We look forward to serving even more of you in the coming year!
And, as always, if you have suggestions about things we could be doing, feel free to drop me a line at joe@pocahontaslibrary.org or stop by any of our branches and chat with your local librarian.