Vista hits million mark; librarians to go punk

With a day to spare, the Vista library pulled it out: the branch checked out more than one million items in year.

That means the 63-year-old boss of the San Diego County Library system will be getting a Mohawk — as he said he would if any of the county’s 33 branches hit the million mark in what became dubbed the Checkout Challenge.

“Subjectively, I am braced, if not resigned, to the big event,” County Library Director Jose Aponte said Monday in a news release announcing Vista had won. “It’s time for me to make good on my promise. I’m going to rock that Mohawk.”

Aponte and five male staffers at the Vista library will shave their hair into the punk cut at an open-to-the-public party at the library branch at 3 p.m. July 11.

Until now, no county library branch had ever reached one million checkouts — a combination of books, e-books, movies, and more — in a single fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30.

But by late Sunday — June 29 — the Vista library branch had hit 1,003,394 checkouts.

The “Mohawks for a Million” campaign was the brainchild of Vista librarian J.P. Baker and his colleagues at the branch, who earlier this spring were brainstorming ways to hit the seven-figure mark. Eventually, all five male staffers at the branch agreed to the Mohawk idea.

“I’ve been growing my hair out long just for this,” Baker said Monday. “I’m really excited. It’s awesome that the community came together as well as all the entire library system.”

Aponte agreed to put his hair on the line. Earlier this month, the San Diego Padres upped the ante, offering free game tickets to library customers who checked out 20 or more items at the three branches with a shot of hitting the mark: Vista, San Marcos and La Mesa.

As of June 29, the San Marcos Branch had reached 885,256 checkouts, and La Mesa had 842,100 checkouts.

County library spokeswoman Chelsea Harris said that the library staffers had reported that a number of people heard about the challenge and hit the library to help it reach the mark.

There’s an added bonus to Vista library for reaching 1 million checkouts: the winning branch gets a new collection of 500 DVDs available for checkout.

Copyright © 2017, The San Diego Union-Tribune
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