Thursday, October 22, 2009

numbers

Got some numbers yesterday while I was spending an extra long time visiting with a friend at a local watering hole having lunch. Yep, hubby called to let me know he was across the river and heading west and I told him I was in a bar. He of course said, "that didn't take long, celebrating my departure already?" My friend and I laughed, but when he called back two hours later and we were still there....we really laughed. Not that sweet tea is considered a hard drink by most folks.

Anyway, while we were lunching and gabbing, a 'little bird' who shall remain forever nameless mentioned hearing some library card renewal numbers at a meeting. In our last big Friends meeting, the numbers were not given...although to be fair, no one asked for the data either.

I asked the 'bird' if he/she would share them with me. I got them later that day. What it boils down to is that only 25% of the recorded card holders have reactivated their cards since the new policy has been in place. 6% of library users identified as non residents have paid the nonresident $25 annual fee. $10,000 has been generated for the Town as a result.

So, 69% of the library cards out there haven't been renewed. Were they ever used in the first place?? It will be most interesting to see if the numbers continue to inch up or if we reach a plateau and are left with a REAL number of library users instead of an inflated one based on the sheer number of cards out there. What will this mean for staffing, funding etc? This whole effort to shed burdensome users may end up shooting everyone in the foot. Now the Town will know exactly how many folks use cards and can use that number when allocating funds.

Are you shortchanging 30,000 library card holders or only 4000 library card users???? Hmmmm, methinks the size of the constituency has SHRUNK.

1 comment:

Anne's BLOG said...

Methinks (good word!) that the numbers reflect the general Apathy that has beset the citizenry in recent years. Why bother to vote, anyway, when you know it will only be more of same. So why bother to renew a library card that was not being used anyway?
I HOPE this is not the real situation with our wonderful library. Any cut in funding would be catastrophic when we don't get enough to do all the things we should/could do in the first place.
HOW to get the 'word' out to those non-renewers? I don't know. You either use the library and all of its facilities or you don't. Being of the former category, I can't understand those who form the latter one.