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Sunday 20 October 2013

Wembley Library The First Quarter

I mentioned before that Wembley Library seems to be a big success compared to the former Town Hall Library, but it is worth looking at the figures for the first quarter of operation for this.

The figures for visitor numbers are:



2013 2012 % Change




July          49,769          20,689 140.6%
August          54,222          21,028 157.9%
September          42,376          17,539 141.6%




Total       146,367          59,256 147.0%

The figures for book borrowing are:



2013 2012 % Change




July          16,549            9,489 74.4%
August          20,205          10,652 89.7%
September          15,262            8,466 80.3%




Total          52,016          28,607 81.8%

These are both impressive jumps in numbers, but I think it is also worth thinking about the qualitative differences.

Some people, like Phil Bradley, see the future of libraries as helping people to cross the digital divide and become more familiar with the latest information technologies.  You can get a sense of this in Wembley with the staff regularly helping people with the PCs and the fixed ipads available.  Less obvious is the ipad lending service or loans of energy meters, and training in things such as how to construct a web site. 

Incidentally, Wembley Library also features an impressive list of writer events, including Martina Cole on Wednesday.  You can find more Brent libraries events here.

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