Our summer reading program has begun. The old building is teaming with kiddoes most hours of the day. I try to picture what Andrew Carnegie would think if he could see us now. In the portrait we have hanging in the east foyer, his eyes twinkle like Santa’s. That Andrew, I think, would be delighted to see the children so enthusiastic for books and learning. Most biographies of Carnegie portray him a little curmudgeonlier. (I wanted to use more curmudgeonly, but the spell check system on my computer disagreed.) Apparently he wasn’t all that pleasant, but very gruff and unbending. That Andrew probably wouldn’t like seeing his temple of knowledge defiled by the presence of children. Oh, well. Mr. Carnegie, we thank you for your $10,000 to get our library up and running. In the 101 years since your gift our library and the building that houses it have been molded and changed to fit the needs of our community and to provide the goods and services its citizens require.
Recently NBC’s Today Show aired a story about public libraries. The focus of that story was that in these troubled economic times people are flocking to libraries in record numbers. The Today story stated that 68% of Americans have a library card. That led me to wonder how we would compare to the national average. According to the last census the population of Humboldt is 4,452. The number of library cards held by folk within the city limits is 3,589---a whopping 80%. We always knew we were smarter than the average bear.
We do go through our patron files every couple of years to delete cards that haven’t been used recently. In Chicago there’s a saying that all the dead vote Democratic, but in Humboldt, those that die or move away don’t check out library books, so we don’t keep them in our records. We have another 900 patrons who live in rural Humboldt County, 542 in Dakota City, 29 with Algona addresses, 447 other public libraries who borrow from us through inter-library loan, one patron who lives in Ames, 125 from Fort Dodge and a bunch from other assorted communities. Our total number of current library card holders is 6651.
Check out the following website: http://www.maine.gov/msl/services/calculator.htm. It is a library usage calculator. You plug in the number of books you’ve checked out, the number of times your kids have attended a program, etc. and the calculator will tell you the dollar value of the services you have received from your library. I roughly calculated the value to the community of last year’s library usage. The cost would have been around $1,747,187.50. Believe me, taxpayers, you aren’t spending anywhere near 1.7 million dollars to keep the library afloat. So our return on investment is very high. If I figured correctly, for every $1 the city spends on the library, the community receives $8-10 worth of goods and services. Not a bad deal.
New on the library shelves:
Wedding Style: Hundreds of Tips and Secrets From the Professionals for Styling Your Own Big Day by Carole Hamilton
Green Wedding: Planning Your Eco-Friendly Celebration by Mireya Navarro
Wedding Chic: 1001 Ideas for Every Moment of Your Celebration by Colin Cowie
Shed Chic: Outdoor Buildings for Work, Rest and Play by Sally Coulthard
Grillin’ With Gas: 150 Mouthwatering Recipes for Great Grilled Food by Fred Thompson
A Shelter in the Garden: Playhouses, Treehouses, Gazebos, Sheds and Other Outdoor Structures by Pierre Nessmann
Outdoor Entertaining Idea Book by Natalie Ermann Russell
No comments:
Post a Comment