Director's Update, November 2019!

It’s getting to be my favorite time of year now – the weather is turning colder, the holidays are approaching, and the prospect of curling up somewhere warm with a good book is more pleasant than ever.  And there’s a lot to choose from, isn’t there?  It’s great knowing that there are more good books that anyone will ever have time to read, and that there will always be something new waiting for me, something that will help me learn something new, or think in a new way.  Visiting another library recently, I was struck, as always, by the fact that any of the stacks and stacks of books on the shelves are available at a whim – working in libraries for so many years still hasn’t dulled the excitement of potential discovery or my appreciation for what libraries do.  But I digress…

I’ve had a lot of great books on my plate recently!  I just finished the first three of the “Prejudices” series by Maryland’s own misanthrope, H.L. Mencken, which was an engrossing read.  I still haven’t read anything by Kurt Vonnegut, and would like to get to that sometime soon.  I’ve always had a weakness for RPG rulebooks, and Ars Magica has been pretty great (if a little overly complicated).  And I recently finished “Falling Up” with my kids – Shel Silverstein never gets old.  Apparently there’s a new Bill Bryson book out as well…

Working on our annual statistics, there’s a lot of good news to report!  Our program attendance shot up this year, and the number of books we’ve checked out to our patrons has inched up as well.  We also had 137,926 patrons come through our doors in the last fiscal year – an increase of 12.4% over last year!  And plugging our statistics into the ALA’s Library Value Calculator, we’re happy to report that we delivered $5,153,157.95 worth of services to our County - $4.16 for every $1 budgeted to us!

We’ve got some great things coming up as well.  In addition to our holiday events and our wonderful ongoing programs such as Storytime, book clubs, Lego clubs and STEM events, we will be revamping our messaging and launching our new “1000 Books Before Kindergarten” initiative in January!  We’re also starting to raise funds for the new Friendsville Library building – watch this space for more information on our upcoming event in March. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, our work on digitizing back issues of “The Republican” continues…

There’s a lot to be proud of at your Library – come on in and see for yourself!