Brent Libraries Figures for the Half Year up to September

The data on library visits and issues for Brent Libraries in the half year up to the end of September is nout out, and (with apologies for formatting) looks like this:

	Loans	% Change
2012/13	483,083
2013/14	485,949	0.6%
2014/15	522,051	7.4%
	Visits	% Change
2012/13	683,333
2013/14	751,853	10%
2014/15	1,067,767	42%

Both loans and visits show significant growth, which confirms the most recent full year data, here. 
The 42% growth in visits is largely driven by Wembley Library, which is really coming into its own. I suspect that the next CIPFA comparison will show it as one of the most popular libraries in London when it next comes out. However, the 7.4% rise in book loans cheers me more as hitherto loan figures were not as good as I hoped despite our strategy ring fencing the book fund for Brent.

UPDATE

Firstly, I am glad to see these figures mentioned on Public Libraries News, but it is sad to see a canard that I thought had been laid to rest.  This is the old, entirely false charge, that the visit numbers for Willesden Green Library included people who did not visit the library.  This is simply factually wrong, and has been denied many times, but is endlessly repeated by "library campaigners" who seem intent on just denigrating everything to do with Brent libraries.  Similarly, the Wembley Library figures only include people who enter the library.  What is true is that a "visit" to Wembley Library (or any other public library) might be the whole day, or for a couple of minutes.  The machines similar measure people coming in, they don't track what they are actually doing.