Friday, January 14, 2011

A look back at 2010

At the start of every year, we in Kansas libraries are required to fill out a report to the State Library of Kansas enumerating our various transactions for the year.  The reporting process has improved tremendously over the past few years, becoming an easily-navigated online exercise in "filling in the blanks".  I have begun to gather information about the past year and some interesting tidbits, not necessarily asked for in the state report, popped out.  While there are lots of number below - I think they are worth a look as they reflect some of the hard work our staff does here.

First, our Children's Outreach program. run single-handedly by one of our GREAT Children's Department staff members had its best year ever.  The original idea for the program was to reach children is preschools and daycare environments who might not otherwise get to the library.  All I can say is that there has been a HUGE demand for the service.  Amy went on 316 storytime trips outside the library with 6,967 attendees!  WOW!

Out of our total collection of DVDs, 1,889 of them were checked out at least once.  In fact, those 1,889 DVDs went out on average nearly 8 times each (14,340 circs).

Using our "Purchase vs. ILL" process we purchased instead of borrowed 665 items requested by our patrons.  To put that in perspective, we process about 14,000 items per year to add to the collection.  So about 5% of those new "things" were added as a direct result of our patrons simply asking.

So how much did we end up borrowing from other libriares on behalf of our patrons?  3,179 items came to us through Inter-Library Loan (ILL).  We loaned other libraries 5,017 items throughout 2010.  The courier service we now use carried 2,790 of the ILL items back to other libraries.

I know that was a long slog, but I think those are interesting numbers.  There are many more for me to look at as I complete the State Report - coffee...must get coffee.

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