Adams County Library’s Most-Read List of 2023

This is my favorite column to write every year! Why, you ask? Well, it’s simply because it is a look back into 2022 to see what was most popular at each branch of the Adams County Library System online through our CloudLibrary Ebook and Eaudio service, as well as the total winner from around the county! One of the tremendous things our library circulation software does is to count the number of times an item circulates. With that information, we can tell how many times any particular item is checked out in a year. We use this information for many things, including purchasing decisions, weeding decisions, and the like, but we also use this information for our “Best of” list every year.

Back by popular demand, this year is a retrospective of what we read here in Adams County in 2023 by seeing what the most checked-out item in each branch for adults, young adults, and children was. It’s your last chance to catch something you haven’t read that others obviously liked in 2023! Let’s see if the most circulated items at each branch were as random as they were in 2022!

Here are the most circulated items by checkout branch in 2023.

Gettysburg Library:

Adult: “Gettysburg, the First Day” by Harry W. Pfanz (Adult Non-Fiction) 24 checkouts

Children’s: “Star Wars: The Force Awakens. New Adventures” by David Fentiman (Early Reader) 22 checkouts

Carroll Valley Library:

Adult: “Wicked Dreams” by Lisa Jackson (Mystery Fiction) 13 Checkouts

Children’s: “Guinness World Records 2023” (Juvenile Non-Fiction) 19 checkouts

Harbaugh-Thomas Library in Biglerville:

Adult: TIE “A Place To Land” By Laura K. Denton (Adult Fiction) & “The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre” by Natasha Lester (Historical Fiction) 17 checkouts

Children’s: 6 Way TIE: “Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea” by Dav Pilkey (Juvenile Graphic Novel),  “CoComelon 5-Minute Stories” (Easy Fiction), “All About Spot” by Eric Hill (Easy Board Book), “Farm” by Xavier Deneux (Easy Board Book), “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” by Bill Martin (East Board Book), and “Super Sleuths: A First Look & Find” by Julia Lobo (East Board Book) 17 checkouts.

Littlestown Library:

Adult: “The Blue Zone” by Andrew Gross (Large Print Fiction) 16 checkouts

Children’s: “Builder Goose: It’s Construction Rhyme Time” by Boni Ashburn (Easy Board Book) 18 checkouts

New Oxford Area Library:

Adult: “Montana Story” (DVD) 10 checkouts

Children’s: “Five Little Pumpkins” (Easy Board Book) 15 checkouts

Jean Barnett Trone Memorial Library of East Berlin:

Adult: 5 Way TIE: “More Mediterranean: 225+ New Plant-Forward Recipes” (Adult Non-Fiction), “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (DVD), “The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches Us About Living Well in the World” by Gary Ferguson (Adult Non-Fiction), “Strange Weather” by Joe Hill (Large Print Fiction), “Fast & Easy Five-Ingredient Recipes: A Cookbook for Busy People” by Philia Kelnhofer (Adult Non-Fiction) 14 checkouts

Children’s: “The Garfield Show – All You Need is Love and Pasta” (Juvenile DVD) 22 checkouts.

Boy, were these all over the place. So many different media, age groups, and a lot of ties. I can’t believe how many Easy Board Books were on the list. This shows that early literacy is strong in Adams County! So, don’t think books didn’t have a good year in Adams County; they did!

Our circulations electronically through CloudLibrary continued to grow in 2023. We thought for sure that we would go down in electronic circulations after the pandemic, but to our surprise, they again went up to new records in 2023. These increases didn’t hurt our physical circulation at all!  We continue to add new material in Ebooks and Eaudios weekly, so check out what we have available. The CloudLibrary app is countywide, so the highest circulation by branch can’t be obtained, but in the spirit of highest circulations for 2023, the highest circulations on Cloudlibrary for 2023 are as follows:

Ebook: “Going Rogue” by Janet Evanovich (Mystery Fiction) 107 checkouts countywide

Eaudio: “Long Shadows” by David Baldacci (Mystery Fiction) 118 checkouts countywide

Have a wonderful 2024! We can’t wait to see you at the library.