What do we read?
It is the end of our fiscal year and report writing time as in many other offices. As boring as that may sound, we, the library staff, can gain a lot of insights by reflecting on the past year and I would suggest that there are a few interesting snippets for you too.
Let’s start with how much money we spent on new library books. Last year, we purchased about 380 books for about $8,200 and Jasper residents donated to our collection with 580 books and a market value of about $11,000. We are very grateful and proud to live in a community of such avid and generous readers. Thank you, Jasper.
Another statistic we look at is the top 10 lists of most read books in various collections. These statistics are not totally reflective of what citizens of Jasper read as books from the Jasper library get sent out to other communities and our system only counts checkouts for individual books, not for patrons’ use. In adult fiction, we find many Kristin Hannah’s books such as The Nightingale, The Women or The Four Winds among the top 10. Other well-read books last year were The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
Children’s picture books such as When a Monster Is Born by Sean Taylor, The Book of Blast Off! by Timothy Knapman and I live in a tree trunk by Meg Fleming were very popular. In the juvenile graphic novels section Guts by Raina Telgemeier beats out all other books in this category by far. But the Babysitter Club series written by several authors has books in the top 10 as well.
For children who are starting to read on their own, the Dog Man and Cat Kid Comic Club series by Dav Pilkey is very attractive. More advanced readers looked for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney or even made the jump to the Harry Potter books. The top three books checked out from the French adult category were Demain j'arrête! by Gilles Legardinier, Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc and L'ecume des jours by Boris Vian.
We lost 286 items in the summer’s wildfire or during evacuation. The adult non-fiction collection took the biggest hit, followed by adult fiction and juvenile graphic novels. But we also received a generous book donation for our library from a previous head of the Jasper library, Jane Fitzpatrick, who now owns a used book store.
We sorted through her donated books and all our donations from our patrons and are happy to share the surplus with all Jasper citizens who want to build up or add to a (new) home library. Please visit the library this February and pick out your favourites.
Please also check out our website at www.jasperlibrary.ab.ca and/or our Facebook page to find out about the events coming up for children and adults alike. We are looking forward to your visit.
