Report of the Library Director for August 2008

Circulation
Circulation for August was 4,807, significantly lower than both July of 2008 and August of 2007, (11% decrease). I can’t think of anything specific that would have caused a circulation decrease, so I’m inclined to just call it an anomaly. Typically we have a steep decline in circulation in September.

Collection Development
We added 122 items to the collection in August.
Our storage area in the Attic is now completely full, which means I will have to resume withdrawing items from the collection, without the luxury of being able to keep them in storage status. We have essentially two choices to reduce our collection size. One option is to keep all the bestselling, popular titles and reduce the breadth of our collection. The other is to keep some of the less well-known titles, and rely on interlibrary loan to supply the previous works of bestselling authors. (for example, we might keep John Grisham’s first two books and latest two books, but withdraw the bulk of his works).
I hope to discuss this issue with the Trustees at their next meeting, so I can withdraw a significant number of titles before the friends of the library booksale. A reasonable goal would be to withdraw about 10% of the book collection, or 1,800 volumes. That amount of shelf space will last us about a year, then we will be completely full again. (we currently have 2,864 items in storage.)

Programs
Library book group: 12 people met on August 27th.
Senior book group: 8 people met on August 5th.
Thursday storytime averaged 8 children per session.
TinyTots lapsit averaged 12 participants.
Teen Tuesday was attended by 6 young adults.
Library Table: 4 visits, averaged 5 patrons and 13 items.

Special Events
92 people attended the summer reading program finale.

Summer Program
See report from Children’s Librarian.

Volunteers
15 items were delivered to 2 patrons on August 27th.

Upcoming Events in September
Thursday storytimes will return to two sessions, one morning and one afternoon.

Build Fairy Houses! Author Tracy Kane is coming to Upton on September 13th for a book reading and outdoor “fairy house” building event, to be held at the Upton State Forest.

Staff
Eileen Rakitin attended a CMRLS workshop on services to Young Adults.

State ARIS report
The ARIS report on library services and usage has been submitted to the MBLC. This is the first big step in the certification process. The second part is our financial report which is due in mid-October.

Some tidbits of statistics about the Upton library excerpted from the report:

Total number of items in the library: increased 7.5% to 33,075. We added 1,417 books, 218 videos, and 1,390 items in electronic formats. (all our electronic format items are purchased and provided by CWMARS.) Audio materials were slightly down.

Circulation activity was close to level from 2007, with a 1% increase. Books are slightly up in circulation, video and audio material slightly down.

Interlibrary loan activity increased 8%, to 15,357 items in the year. We still lend a few more items than we borrow.

The number of Upton residents with library cards increased 7.5% to 3,621, over half the town’s population.


Plans for Next Month

1) Plan fall events, 1st grade field trip.

2) Complete the State certification compliance form.

3) Extensively weed the storage location.