Library Visit

I visited the Anastasia Island Public Library.  Currently, this branch is servicing both it's regular patrons, as well as the main St. John's County Public Library located in downtown St. Augustine because the main branch is undergoing renovations.

 

 

I visited the library midafternoon on a weekday.  This library is located within a neighborhood and a small retail area.  There were several patrons utilizing different features of the library during my visit.  Three or four people were using the library's desk top computers.  One couple appeared to be paying bills or doing their taxes.  One man was reading the news online and another lady was watching a movie.  The library has a small young adult/teen area and there was one teen studying and taking notes from a book in this area.  There were several people who appeared to be on their lunch breaks reading newsprint newspaper and a few on their own personal laptops.

 

 

The printed book section in the general library section was quite small (only about 8 aisles).  The only person I saw in the aisles was actually looking at DVDs. There was a sign stating that the library would be hosting tax preparation and filing services.  The library has 2 or 3 separate meeting/conference rooms for classes and community events.

 

The children's section was surf themed.  There were two children in the library at the time of my visit.  One child was sitting on a bean bag chair reading a book and the other was playing a aviation computer game on one of the 4 computers dedicated to the children's section.  There was a toddler/infant play area.  This was a good idea I thought so that parents could assist older children in finding books while the younger ones played.

 

Overall, the children's section was very inviting and seemed to have a wide selection of traditional books available for children.

 

 

I looked up the utilization numbers for the St. John's county library system.  They report that there were a total of 1,037,328 library visits county wide in 2012-2013.  There were 156,987 computer usages and an average circulation of 1,704,138 books annually or 142,012 books per month.  I was surprised to find that there were only half the number of website visits (516,082) than actual library visits.  The library had a wide variety of ebooks available for all ages, as well as audiobooks.  There were 21,257 Ebooks available for patrons and 405,961 print items. Additionally, there were nearly 3 times as many audiovisual materials than ebooks available for patrons to check out.