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August 25, 2008
Local libraries a success story
Courier-News Online Aug. 25, 2008
About the best news a town could get — or a society, for that matter — is that more people are using the library.
It might seem counterintuitive to expect that, considering the extent to which Americans now rely on their home computers to gather information, but it's happening anyway, and Sayreville provides a good example.
The library's Summer Reading Club for children, which ended this month, had 525 youngsters registered this year, compared with 300 last year.
In addition, overall circulation of materials from the borough library has increased 18 percent over last year. The library is issuing more than 300 new membership cards each month, according to Library Director Susan Kaplan.
Kaplan has noted that the borough's population as of the 2000 U.S. Census was 40,377, and that the library last year made more than 22,600 individual loans.
Even considering that the population has grown some since that census, the number of loans implies that the library is serving the needs and interests of a large portion of borough residents.
There's a lot of conventional wisdom, and some hard evidence, that ours is no longer a nation of readers, if reading involves print on paper.
But phenomena like the response to the "Harry Potter'' and "Twilight'' series indicates that reading books can still be attractive and … most interesting of all … attractive to boys and girls who were born into the digital age.
There's nothing wrong with receiving information and education from digital sources, and libraries like the one in Sayreville and the ones throughout Middlesex County have kept pace with changing technology and changing habits and now provide their users with Internet access and with CDs and DVDs.
But libraries also provide in one location shelves loaded with books of every description, and they provide an atmosphere that reminds us, including the fidgety young among us, that low-tech exploration of the thoughts and experiences and recollections and imaginations of others has not and probably will not go out of style.
Posted by tumulty at August 25, 2008 10:10 AM
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