Excerpts from the Librarian's Annual Report
19 October 2009

1.0 Statistics

1.1 Membership:
There were 626 paid adult members on 16 October, 4 more than last year's 622 adult members. There are 553 child members, up from 459 last year. Since the children do not pay, this is a fairly arbitrary number. I have not had the time to remove inactive child members. Tom Matthews reports having caught zero mice; he subcontracted out the removal of a raccoon.

1.2 Circulation:
  2008-2009 2007-2008 Change
Adults 6434 6787 -5,2 %
Children 2668 2840 -6,1 %
School visits and loans 722 1098 -34.2 %
Children and school 3390 3939 -21,0 %
Total 9824 10725 -8,4 %

Depressing. I have always considered circulation as a good measure of our usefulness. However, more and more we have people using the Library’s Internet facilities, both our computers and our wireless access. We have no measure of this service.

1.3 Inter-Library Loan:
The Library borrowed 126 books on Inter Library Loan, 50 % more than last year. These books came from 27 different libraries. The Library also lent 11 books, the same as last year. The Internet is a huge help and the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec has a great tool for helping find the library that has the book we need.

1.4 Documents Catalogued:
  2008-2009 2007-2008 2006-2007
English Adult Books bought 180 133 136
Books gift 18 48 92
Audio-cassettes bought 1 4  
Audio-cassettes gift 1   14
Audio CD bought 13 12  
Audio CD gift 3 5 16
Video-cassettes gift 5   7
Large print bought 30 46 35
Large print gift 4    
DVD gift 4   4
English Children's Books bought 102 102 108
Books gift 9 1 24
Audio-cassettes gift     2
Video-cassettes gift   9 3
Total English 364 364 441
Adulte français Livres achetés 159 114 133
Livres donnés   4 33
Livres à gros caractères   4 33
Enfants français Livres achetés 113 108 169
Livres donnés 4 1 4
Vidéo-cassettes données     1
DVD donné 1    
Total français 283 227 340
TOTAL 591 781 659
Switching to ordering English books from Chapters has allowed us to buy more English books. Gifts are down, but that is because I am very choosy about what I keep. People want to read the latest best seller!

1.6 Weeding:
294 books were weeded. Since we added 647 books, it is not enough!