Lauding the library

I just got back from the volunteer appreciation lunch sponsored by the library board and the Friends of the Library. I went as staff, Tom as one of the much-appreciated volunteers.

To share some of what we learned: [All statistics are from 2012, the last year for which complete figures are available, of course.]

1. Items circulated -- over 113,000
2. Visitors to library and bookmobile -- 128,978
3. Reference questions answered by staff -- close to 20,000 [Laura asked if they had to be ones we answered correctly, and we were assured that they were correctly answered. More or less.]
4. Computer sessions on the public access computers -- almost 60,000
5. WiFi service provided to about 5,5000 users.
6. Library collection: 46,000 items on the shelf. Access to over 3 million items through the South Central Library System. Access to over 63,000 e-books and downloadable audiobooks
7. More than 5,000 people attended special library programs and over 1,800 children and young adults attended summer programs at the library.

To put this into some perspective, the Kilbourn Public Library is a joint venture of the City of Wisconsin Dells and the Village of Lake Delton, serving those towns and the surrounding area. The city and village have a combined population of about 5,500. Plenty of people living outside the village and city limits use the library, too. But there are other libraries in Reedsburg, Portage and Baraboo, all with fifteen to twenty miles. So we do not carry the burden of more rural patrons by ourselves.

The special population we serve is made up of the millions of tourists who descend on the area every summer and the hundreds of foreign students who come to work to make the tourist industry possible.These people especially make use of the library's computer access to check e-mails and stay in touch with family and friends back home, whether back home is Minnesota or Moldova. Trust me, we have both kinds of people.

The Kilbourn Public Library has ranked as a Star Library in the American Library Journal's national rankings every year since the Journal started doing the rankings. Tom and I are happy to help the library be the great service to the community that it is.