Pull out your noise makers and confetti cannons. It’s time to celebrate. The Knox County Public Library has hit a new milestone. Last year, library card holders checked out or renewed more than 3 million items for the first time. That’s a lot of borrowing.
To break that down, every month, our patrons borrowed or renewed 258,000 books, CDs, DVDs, movies and more. Or about 8,500 items every single day. One third of those items were downloaded as ebooks, audiobooks, magazines or streaming music and movies. We’re teetering on breaking the one million download mark in a single year.
Lest you think that all that downloading has kept people out of the brick-and-mortar libraries, think again. Nearly one million pairs of feet trod in and out of KCPLs 19 facilities. Or 83,330 people every month. They came in to attend one of our 40 storytimes, book clubs or programs every week, or to use our computers and Wi-Fi.
They may have printed out documents, which they can queue up from home, or scanned their family documents in the Memory Lab. Every month, they asked about 20,000 questions through reference services. And of course, they checked out books.
And that’s not all. every single month, 19,000 children under the age of 5 living in Knox County received a free book in the mail from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which is administered by KCPL. Knox County residents are reading, learning, connecting and discovering. To say we’re grateful for all the support in this season of Thanksgiving is an understatement.
Mary Pom Claiborne is assistant director for marketing, communications and development for Knox County Public Library