A Year of Progress at IPL

What happened at the Independence Public Library during the last fiscal year (July 1, 2010 – June 30, 2011)?  I’m hoping you saw first-hand some of the services, events, and materials provided.  Even if you did not personally use the library, my guess is that you have friends, neighbors, and co-workers who did.  I’d like to share what the community received from your local library during the year.

So, let’s start with the money.  The city allocation to the library per person (population of 5,966) was $39.42 for library services, which compares to the cost of an audiobook.  The Independence Public Library’s county funding per person was $6.76, which compares to the cost of a paperback book.

One of the biggest changes in fiscal year 2010-2011 (FY11) was the addition of a Program Coordinator to our staff.  A big thank you goes to the Independence City Council for supporting this new position.  Kara Vance was hired as the coordinator and has been with the library in that capacity since February.  Kara works with the staff to create, plan, and implement programming for teens and adults.  We can see the results in our numbers, with the number of teen programs jumping from 12 the previous year to 25 in FY11.  Many opportunities were offered for adults as well with the number of programs going from 22 to 56.  Ironically, our program attendance is identical to the population of our community at 5,966!

Programming results also come from patrons telling us about their experiences.  In one case, a woman took several of our computer classes.  When interviewing for a job, she was asked if she could do specific functions with a computer.  Her answer was, “Yes, I just took a computer class at the library and learned how to do those things.”  I was told of another situation the other day when the mother of a teen girl called me and told me that her daughter was finding her niche at the library.  She had joined the library’s iTAB group, the Independence Teen Advisory Board.  Now she is helping to plan and attending such things as a book discussions, craft/gift making times, and game days and is so excited about the opportunities!

When we moved books and other materials from the Munson Building to the new building, about 30,000 items were moved.  Thanks to an endowment, many generous donations, and our regular budget dollars going towards materials, the library had over 36,000 materials at the end of fiscal year 2011.  The collection of DVDs has especially grown with many wonderful donations of gently used DVDs.  We asked…and you gave, which was in large part the increase from approximately 1,000 DVDs to over 1,400 DVDs.  Thank you for your support and generous hearts!

Check out the table and the graph to see how checkouts and other usage like visits to the library, computer use, library cardholders, and other services have fared in the last four years.

You can see that the library continues to enjoy increases in usage.  Checkouts were over 90,000 during the year and computer usage was over 39,000.  As far as the meeting rooms go (Community Room and study rooms), they were use 1,490 times.  An average of 27 people visited the library during each hour we were open.

Great things are happening at the library.  Some of the highlights from the last fiscal year were the addition of downloadable ebooks to our NEIBORS offerings, summer reading programs for all age groups with great programs like a StarLab and Travelogues, the author visit from Chad Lewis who wrote Haunted Iowa, and volunteers donating 716 hours of their time!

I hope that you feel that your investment in the community through taxpayer dollars has been well-spent.  If you have any questions, would like to see the full report or more of our data, please stop in, call 334-2470, or e-mail indylib@indytel.com.  Lots of learning, entertainment, reading, computing, sharing, discussing, listening, and exploring has taken place at the Independence Public Library…Where Minds are Free to Grow!