2023 By the Numbers
Wow! What an amazing year 2023 has been! Our Library is incredibly grateful to have such a supportive community year after year. Our staff felt like 2023 was an extremely busy year, and our official year-end numbers confirmed it. We were surprised by just how busy we were, and we wanted to share the numbers with you.
In 2023, our Library received a total of 26,254 visitors. We organized 143 programs, which were attended by 4,686 people in total. We were happy to welcome 1,200 new Library cardholders and checked out 36,783 items to all of our users. Our users saved $477,323 by utilizing the library's resources instead of buying the same items personally. We also added 1,252 new items to our collection, which is valued at $24,453. Additionally, we provided free computer access to 1,984 people, in addition to our free high-speed WiFi connection that is utilized daily.
In 2023, we decided to stop charging late fees on books. We believe that late fees often create barriers to users and may cause patron guilt, leading to a decrease in library use. This change has been well received by the community and we have actually seen a decrease in items not being returned to the Library. We also updated our website, making it more user-friendly, and started offering Tonieboxes and Tonies, which have become one of our most popular items. In October 2023, we celebrated the annular solar eclipse by hosting a viewing party and giving away over 500 solar eclipse glasses to our community.
Thank you all so much for being a part of our Library family! We are here for you and because of you. 2023 was our busiest year in Library history, and we had a blast! We can't wait to see what 2024 has in store for us.
