Summer Reading 2011: The Final Frontier

Summer reading's finally over, and I've done most of the tabulation for participation and program attendance. We have a slack week between when we end and when we really end (which gives stragglers a chance to collect prizes), so my numbers are based on the numbers before slack week, which is good enough for me.

I'm thrilled with increases just about everywhere, and I have so many ideas for improving the program next year. I'm saving up my post on that for later this week.

Our library serves a population of about 14,000, with a wide geographical reach (a lot of it rural and without any public transportation). I'm the only youth services librarian, but I was so lucky this summer to have an intern help me out nearly 20 hours a week, as well as an adult volunteer who helped out about that much, and I had 2 members of our Friends of the Library who helped in running our twice-a-week prize store.

Registration

We had a total of 532 under the age of 19 register for the program. That broke down as 78 pre-readers, 240 youth between 4 and 12, and 114 teens. That surpassed last year's numbers, which had 520 registered, with 45 pre-readers, 413 youth, and 62 teens. In 2009, 509 registered, with 39 pre-readers, 400 youth, and 70 teens.

For the pre-readers, we had 45% of all the available activities completed by participants (I took the number of participants by the number of total activities to get that number). More than 50% of those who signed up came back to check in, which is an excellent return rate. 30% of the pre-readers completed the entire program. All together, this group completed a total of 1,055 literacy activities.

For the youth, we had 31% of all the possible hours read by participants (I took the total number of participants by the total number of possible hours to get that number). 21% of the youth checked in their logs, and 16% completed the entire program. All together, this group read for a total of 2,597.5 hours this summer.

For the teens, we had 33% of all the possible hours read by participants (I took the total number of participants by the total number of possible hours to get that number). 50% of the teens checked in their logs, and 20% completed the entire program. All together, this group read for a total of 1,885 hours.

Programming

The teen mobile collection, which ran twice a week during lunch hours at the high school, we had 12 teens sign up for the reading club, and we circulated 25 items.

This summer, we offered 16 all-ages programs, 7 tween programs, 9 teen programs, and 10 story times. We had a total of 42 programs that brought out 1,342 attendees. Last year, by comparison, there were a total of 51 program and a total attendance of 1,464. Last year, there were two story hours offered, and if you take out the story time sessions for both this year and last year, we had a total of 1,200 attendees at our programs, compared to 1,121 last year. It makes me think if we had offered two story times like we did before, we'd have easily beat last year's attendance numbers, but I'm thrilled with how high program attendance without story time included was.

By comparison, in 2009 thee were 50 programs total for an attendance of 1,706. Taking out story times, which were offered 5 different times during the week (including two as outreach), there were only 10 programs and an attendance of 831.

I broke out teen programming into another category, as well, and we had a total of 9 programs this summer for teens, with an attendance of 117. Last year, there were 3 teen programs, with 21 attendees. In 2009, there were 3 programs offered for teens and 15 attended. Our numbers here have skyrocketed. I think the idea that "if you build it, they will come" is true, and I think getting into the schools a lot has helped greatly. We also had 8 teens sign up for library cards this summer, which is a great number to see.

Other thoughts

When the program ended, the first thing I did was open up a document and begin planning out improvements for next year. I've got a handle on what the scope of the program is, and I have goals for where I can expand. As much as I'm completely burned out and over summer reading (and eager to get rid of our decorations, prizes, fliers, etc.), I'm also a little excited about planning ahead.