2011 Annual Report
Annual Report of the Trustees for 2011
We begin by thanking the volunteers who keep the library open Wednesday evenings—Nancy Picthall-French, Mary Smith, and Mary Evanofski—and also everyone who made donations during the past year. Your support is indispensable. We used money donated in memory of Frederic Dawe to purchase a globe, new toys, a flannelboard for storytimes, and miscellaneous supplies, and for a one-year subscription to the online genealogy database, AncestryQuest.
Thanks to Judith O’Donnell and her enthusiastic Labrador, Sadie, we experimented with providing reading therapy for children last winter. Sadie is a very good listener, so if there is any further interest in this program, we’ll ask if she’s willing to volunteer again.
Judith O’Donnell made a very generous donation to the library at the end of the year, and Pat Hannon also remembered us with a “Merry Christmas” donation.
We changed our catalog and circulation system to an offsite hosting service, which means patrons can now log on any time—day or night—to check on what materials we have, reserve items that are currently checked out, and renew books they haven’t quite finished with.
Our preschool storytime began its second year, and our book group for grown-ups its fifteenth! The Summer Reading Program was a global experience with One World—Many Stories. Thank you to the volunteers who provided entertainment, snacks, or both at our programs. Join us in 2012 as we “Dream Big---Read.”
Attendance was up slightly in 2011, with 2628 people coming in to look for books and magazines, check out DVDs and audiobooks, or use the internet. They checked out 6466 materials, and downloaded 700 audiobooks and 250 ebooks from the increasingly-popular New Hampshire Downloadables site. We are very grateful for the New Hampshire State Library van delivery service that enabled us to borrow 251 materials from and lend 447 to other libraries in the state. We added 711 books, audiobooks, and DVDs to our collection, giving us a total of 11,114 materials. We deleted 33 patrons from our records and added 71, leaving us with a total of 618 registered users of the library.
Respectfully submitted,
Sandy Starkey, Chair
Sue Barnes, Secretary
Marty Bender, Treasurer