2012 was a very busy year for the Meigs County District Public Library. Even with budget cuts still in effect, library usage has increased. Some of the increase is due to the library’s membership in the Ohio Valley Library Consortium (OVLC), which allows for sharing materials with 6 other libraries in the region. Meigs County is what is known as a “net lender” in the program. Overall, we lend more items to other libraries in the consortium than the number of items our patrons borrow from consortium libraries. That’s not to say our patrons don’t borrow a lot though.
Here are a few numbers from our recent annual state report. The Meigs County Library currently has 22,142 registered borrowers, 16,406 of whom are adults and 5,736 of whom are children. Of those registered, 7,907 have used their library card in the last 3 years. Library staff circulated 169,913 items in 2012. This number was made up of 133,368 adult items and 38,545 children’s items. E-books hit an all-time high at MCDPL with 4,129 circulations in 2012. We provided 12,122 items to be borrowed by other libraries around the state including 150 libraries in the MORE (Moving Ohio’s Resources Everywhere) Consortium, and the 6 libraries in our more local OVLC consortium. From those same libraries, we borrowed 7,309 items for use by our patrons in Meigs County.