An interesting year

HPL went through a pretty exciting year of change in 2016. We started off the year by hiring a Marketing expert in anticipation of our spring brand launch. What we didn't anticipate was a small job of repainting the Business Office turning in to a major mold remediation job! Despite that upset, we managed to launch Seemore and the new look for the library. We bid for and hired a contractor to remodel the Main street entrance and a part of the Children's library. We did all of our regular stuff - programming, Summer Reading Program, checked out materials, answered questions, and much, much more all while maneuvering around construction areas and plugging our ears during long days of jack-hammering.

Despite all the chaos, our door counters recorded 252,332 entries in to the building. Our wifi was used 38,850 times by 4,267 different devices and we answered 22,414 reference questions! Amazing! Believe it or not, our circulation of physical items was 369,101. That's real, solid stuff, not digital. And our digital circulation grew as well with over 50,000 checkouts of ebooks, eaudio, music, and emagazines.

We did well. We did amazingly well, I think. I'm looking forward to 2017 and some additional exciting projects we have planned. But right now, I'm just thankful for the great people who make HPL the wonderful resource that it is - the staff and volunteers who work so hard to make it a place for all to come and discover something new, explore, and connect with others.

Finally, thank you Hutchinson for using our great library, and thank you to all who come from farther afield as well. We will continue to serve you to the best of our abilities in 2017 and beyond.