Again, this year I have been tasked with writing the first Adams County Library System Gettysburg Times article of the year…. I believe this makes for at least four years running…. Past New Year’s library articles that I have written about included the “5 Best Kept Secrets of the Adams County Library System” and a masterpiece (if I do say so myself!) from two years ago called “You Got A New Device for Christmas, Now What?”
Back by popular demand, this year is a retrospective of what we read here in Adams County in 2022 by seeing what was the most checked-out item in each branch for both adults and children. See if you missed any you should have read in 2022, and add them to your to-do list in 2023! Any that really stuck out to you? Why would this be on there? Outside of your comfort zone? This list is a great way to expand your horizons and read something that obviously other people loved and maybe you missed. Let’s see if the most circulated items at each branch were as random across the different types of media as they were last year.
Here are the most circulated items by checkout branch in 2022.
Gettysburg Library:
Adult: “Royal Flying Doctor Service” (DVD) 19 checkouts
Children’s: “Buddy’s Big, Big Book of Big, Big Dinosaurs” (Easy Board Book) 28 checkouts
Carroll Valley Library:
Adult: “100 Greatest Tips & Timesavers” by Walter Chandoha (Adult Non-Fiction) 18 checkouts
Children’s: “Go Away, Big Green Monster” by Ed Emberley (Easy Picture Book) 16 checkouts
Harbaugh-Thomas Library in Biglerville:
Adult: “Margaret Truman’s Murder at the CDC” by Jon Land (Mystery Fiction) 19 checkouts
Children’s: “Never Touch a Dragon” by Rosie Greening (Easy Board Book) 19 checkouts
Littlestown Library:
Adult: “All Summer Long” by Susan Mallery (Large Print) 14 checkouts
Children’s: “Weird but True 2! 350 Outrageous Facts (Juvenile Non-Fiction) tied with
“Let’s Move” (Easy Board Book) 16 checkouts
New Oxford Area Library:
Adult: “Seven Worlds, One Planet” (DVD) 14 checkouts
Children’s: “I Thought I Saw a Bear” by Lydia Nichols (Easy Board Book) 16 checkouts
Jean Barnett Trone Memorial Library of East Berlin:
Adult: “Butterfly Blueprints” (DVD) 16 checkouts
Children’s: “Where’s Waldo: The Spectacular Spotlight Search: by Martin Hansford
(Easy Picture Book) 20 checkouts
After pulling the reports necessary to correlate this list, there are some definite threads throughout the subjects and types of materials that appear. First, I noticed the titles of the children’s books, included dragons, Weird but True books, Where’s Waldo, and dinosaur books, at the top of the most checked-out list. As a reformed children’s librarian of 4 years, this is not surprising to me in the slightest. These are always popular requests in the children’s department! The other thing I noticed is that DVDs still remain popular. Even with the proliferation of streaming services, which certainly has had an effect on what we buy and what circulate, the Adult DVD circulation is still checking out strongly in Adams County. That isn’t too big of a surprise still, due to location and economic hardships for high-speed internet in a large swath of Adams County, we still have many patrons coming in looking for interesting titles to check out. Have no fear; if it looks like in the adult listings for each branch that no books except for one large print registered as the highest circulating item at that branch, most of the second-place items were indeed books. Honestly, that isn’t completely surprising, as many patrons take multiple DVDs at a time, where they might take fewer books because it takes longer to complete them. 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 2022. 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 2022, although not as drastic of an increase as during the two previous pandemic years. We continue to add new material in Ebooks and Eaudios regularly, 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 2022, the highest circulations on Cloudlibrary for 2022 are as follows:
Ebook: “Run, Rose, Run” by James Patterson and Dolly Parton with 61 checkouts
Eaudio: “Leave Only Footprints” by Conor Knighton (Our 2022 Adams County Reads One Book title) with 38 checkouts
Thank you for a wonderful first full year back to normal for the Adams County Library System. We wish you the very best in 2023!
Brandt A. Ensor is Assistant Executive Director, Adams County Library System.