The value of your library

December 2, 2013 by  
Filed under Directors Blog, News

Your tax dollars at work

by Debbie Cosper, BCPL director

By now Boyd County residents have received their tax bills. Like most things, some people paid it without really looking at more than the grand total. Some probably looked more closely, and some I’m sure grumbled about having to pay it at all. But I’m also sure that almost everyone wondered what each entity does with what they get. Well, I’m here to tell you exactly where the library’s portion of your hard-earned money went.

It was combined with funds from other property tax payers to generate 82% of the library’s budget, or $2,835,442. Another $342,228 (10 percent) came from vehicle and delinquent taxes; $127,771 (just under 4 percent) from state grants; and $139,357 (4 percent) from overdue fines, printer/copier fees, interest, and investments. The library’s total revenue for the 2012-2013 fiscal year was $3,444,798.

So that’s what came in. What about the funds that were spent? Twenty-one percent, or $717,209, purchased materials; $1,432,919 (42 percent) went to salaries; $647,739 (19 percent) to operating expenses; $161,226 (5 percent) to electronic access; and $398,657 (12 percent) to building and infrastructure improvements. The remaining 3 percent, $87,048, went into a reserve fund for future expansion.

With those funds, the library’s three locations were open 351 days for 8,608 hours. Staff greeted 292,757 visitors. A total of 38,432 people used the computers, and 328 groups used the meeting rooms 496 times. Staff handled 36,366 inquiries for information. The library subscribed to 583 print subscriptions and 94 databases. The collection of 120,751 books, 57,841 e-books, 27,568 audiobooks, and 35,538 movies checked out a record-setting 523,152 times!

The library also offered several special services. With Freegal, users downloaded and kept 3,621 free songs. Through interlibrary loan, 2,182 items were borrowed for our users from other libraries and 2,710 items were loaned to other libraries.

The library held 684 programs that were attended by 11,615 people. Of that total, there were 269 programs attended by 4,963 adults; and 51 programs attended by 508 teens. Library staff visited with 3,215 school aged children during 91 visits; and 2,928 toddlers and preschoolers attended 273 story times at the library.

This was all done within three branches, 33,100 square feet, and with 34 librarians and 14 support staff.

Staff also reshelved nearly 500,000 items, placed holds on checked out items, helped people find something to read, took classes, and participated in parades, festivals, 5Ks, and community events. library value calculator 2

Boyd County Public Library is one of five Exemplary Libraries in Kentucky. That means the library is succeeding in its mission to provide quality resources and access to information to our community.  If you would like to see just how much value your library tax dollars are worth, go to the value calculator on this site.

For more information about the library’s budget or services, give me a call: 606.329.0518, ext. 1110. You can also email me: dcosper@thebookplace.org

 

 

About  

Comments are closed.

Site by IonicNet Wordpress Developer in NJ
http://thebookplace.org/the-value-of-your-library/
thebookplace.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-41
64119
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:2YUS6GFU2GQWVD4OIQRNKM2LRQBUCDAS
<urn:uuid:566ccb05-5bc6-419d-9fab-c094c9d1365b>
2014-10-02T06:24:07Z
207.210.203.59
sha1:KJFNFWRWSX5C6ERPKDZOHD5MK23OCBHD
<urn:uuid:9ded7afd-2402-4798-99ba-8675f0d38050>
http://thebookplace.org/the-value-of-your-library/
length
response
<urn:uuid:f68c821f-1866-46f1-afd1-7d97de185171>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-41
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for September 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf