If you’ve been in the library lately, you may have thought, “Man, it’s busy in here.” First off, thank you for visiting. Secondly, your perception is correct. It is busy in here.

One of my least favorite jobs is completing the Illinois Public Libraries Annual Report for the State every year. We call it the IPLAR for short. The IPLAR asks every library in the State to report all sorts of statistical data, budget information, staffing levels, and so on.

This data collection, although tedious, is important as it helps the State Library do their job better. As a part of that job, the State Library controls some of our grant funding. They publish “best practices” to help us all do better. They also share IPLAR data nationally with the Public Libraries Survey and the Institute of Museum and Library Services to analyze trends and benchmarks in library services across the country.

Bored yet? I hope not.

In reviewing our data for this year, some interesting numbers stood out. To start, our foot traffic (again, thanks for visiting) was up 14.5% over last year. In raw numbers, we had 124,533 visits during that 12-month span. That’s over 10,000 people per month on average!

Likewise, the number of checkouts for physical material went up 2.6%, to a total of 250,927 items. Digital items jumped up by 21.3% to a total of 53,190. Digital is gaining, but there is still a long way to go when compared to print.

Our event attendance, however, is what really stood out. We had 10,670 people attend an event at the library during the last 12 months. That counts everything from story times to teen nights to yoga classes — you name it. It’s these special events that help us fulfill our mission as a community center and a place for learning.

For context, that attendance number of 10k+ represents a nearly 33% increase over the previous year. That’s huge!

I have one final set of data to share with you, and that pertains to our annual partnership with AARP. If you are unfamiliar, each year we host AARP volunteers who help members of the community file their taxes, free of charge. While AARP is traditionally known as an organization for older adults, they help all sorts of people with their taxes through this program.

This tax season, AARP helped 738 individuals file their taxes at the library. This is a 22% increase over last year. Combined, those taxpayers saved roughly $203,000 in fees. What’s more, tax volunteers helped these clients realize approximately $458,000 in Federal returns and another $45,000 in State returns.

This service is so valuable for our community, especially those folks on the lower end of the economic spectrum.

I’m proud that our library is more than “just books.” Thank you, reader, for being a part of that.