Literary Reading Rates Among Adults Increases

That's good news to librarians. The National Endowment for the Arts has published an article called "Survey of Public Participation in the Arts" which states that in 2008, 50.2% of adults read a novel, short story, poem or play either in print or online. That's up from 46.7% in 2002.

One interesting point in this is that they didn't count nonfiction which makes up a sizeable amount of our circulation. So the reading public is alive and well, no matter what they are reading.

Circs up!

The final numbers are in and the Library had a very busy year in 2008, checkout-wise, increasing by 7.55%! That's 20,800 more items used last year than the year before.

Part of the increase was due to the new and very popular Tumblebooks and Tumblereaders, which are online books for kids to look at and read. Adult readership was up too, increasing by almost 6000 books.

Other notable increases were seen in the number of reference questions asked and the overall computer use.

The increased use may be due to the unstable economy making us more wary of spending money when we could borrow things free. The Library's continued excellence may also contribute to the larger numbers. Whatever the reason, we're glad you're using us in greater numbers and will work to continue that in 2009.

Elvita