FY20 by the numbers

Now that FY20 has come to an end, it’s interesting to look at some of our numbers for the year, and what effect the pandemic has had on our usage.

Circulation

2,334,359 items were checked out in FY20, compared to 2,832,399 items in FY19, a decrease of 18%.  This total includes all physical items checked out (including renewals), as well as eBooks, eAudiobooks, eMagazines, and eVideos. 

The library was closed to the public almost exactly three months, from mid-March to mid-June, so a decrease of 18% (as opposed to a decrease of 25%, as one might expect) is very respectable.  It helped that staff checked out 55,863 items to patrons in the first 5 weeks of curbside pickup, before the branches reopened on June 15.  Cumming was down 38% for the year (a larger percentage drop than the other branches because of being closed 7 ½ weeks for renovation in the late fall), Hampton Park was down 12%, Post Road was down 16%, and Sharon Forks was down 20%

.

As we have noted previously, usage of the eLibrary continued to climb last year, particularly while the library was closed.  177,952 eBooks were checked out in FY20, compared to 137,637 in FY19, an increase of 29%.  94,919 eAudiobooks were checked out, compared to 68,669, an increase of 38%.  29,195 eMagazines were checked out, compared to 23,351, an increase of 25%.

Programs

Of course, since mid-March there have been no in-person programs, including during the summer, which is traditionally the library’s busiest time of the year.  Our total in-person program attendance in FY20 was 47,333, a 43% decrease from FY19’s total of 83,152.  But we very successfully added a completely new component for FCPL in 2020, virtual programming, which had attendance or views of 76,830. 

Some of Our Other Numbers

                                                            FY20                           FY19                           Change

Library Visits                                       516,732                       724,586                       -29%

Reference Transactions                     65,845                         83,249                         -21%

Outreach Attendance                         13,898                         34,136                         -59%

Computer Sessions                            45,339                         70,695                         -36%

Wireless Sessions                              202,797                       233,248                       -13%

Staff Training Hours                           5,228                           2,648                           97%

Bookmarked Blog Views                    67,282                         24,186                         178%

Unreadable Podcast Downloads        3,553                           1,793                           98%

You can find more numbers, as well as a breakdown by branch, on SharePoint.