AVALON – With a world that is increasingly digital and a community with large numbers of homeowners whose principal residences are elsewhere, innovation and outreach are key to any effort to provide year-round service. The leadership team directing Avalon’s Library and History Center understand that challenge.
Avalon Borough Council heard presentations April 11 from Erin Brown, director of the Avalon Free Library, and Nina Ranalli, director of the borough’s History Center.
Both presented statistics on use in 2017 and unveiled their strategic plan for the future.
The numbers tell a story one would expect. Library use has shifted increasingly to digital visits and electronic circulation. A graphic of a patron reading while comfortably lounging on the beach depicts an e-reader in her hands, not a traditional book.
Since 2014, electronic content has claimed a 33 percent share of content circulated by the library, up from 13 percent in 2014. Circulation of traditional books for both adults and juveniles is down from almost 40 percent to barely over 30 percent.
While those numbers do not mean that the library is any less important to the community, they show that the traditional library must serve its patrons in new ways.
The library has increased its electronic content to fit patrons’ needs. It has also added new programming, seeking to increase a patron’s interactive experience with the library.
The effort is paying off as program attendance is up significantly with almost 15,000 participants in programs in 2017.
The library boasted 852 new patrons in 2017, even with actual visits to the library down from past years. A library is a source of information and services, but increasingly that need not translate into a trip to a brick-and-mortar building.
The History Center, 215-39th St. has likewise moved into remote access strategies to satisfy patrons’ needs. The center digitized 966 objects in 2017, making them available for remote access.
Strategic Planning
Use of a planning survey that saw 544 people respond helped the combined organizations lay out a strategic plan for the future. With goals for expanding use, spreading awareness of resources and services available and continuing to foster awareness, both organizations have embraced the trend to remote access.
Plans for increased digitization of History Center collections, new services like remote technical help for patrons, a new website and increased use of analytics to track customer needs, the library and the History Center strive to address the circumstance of the community they serve.
Five-Star Award
The council also heard from Brown that the library was selected as a five-star library by the Library Journal for the 10th year in a row. This makes the library one of 13 “All-Time All Stars” designated in 2017 by the Journal.
The Library Journal is a trade organization for librarians across the country and has a trade magazine that is recognized as the largest such journal in terms of circulation.
The Journal annually awards stars to libraries based on a set of established service criteria relative to the library’s budget size and per-capita use in its community.
The Journal started the most recent round of competition with 7,409 libraries to rate, of those 259 received either three, four, or five stars.
The Avalon Free Public Library is the only library in New Jersey to receive five stars while having a budget below $5 million.
Six libraries across the state have earned stars from the Journal with two others attaining the coveted five-star rating, but each of those, Princeton Public Library and Mercer County Library, have large budgets and fall into other categories in the Journal’s process.
One other library in the county has received stars from the Library Journal. Ocean City Public Library was a three-star library in the 2017 competition.
Avalon and Ocean City libraries are independent, funded by their respective municipalities, and are not participants in the Cape May County Library System.
Highlights for 2018
Maintaining a connection with the library and the History Center in 2018 holds out the promise of high rewards. Among the plans for the coming year are visits from four of The New York Times bestselling authors, a three-part series on the history of Avalon, and programming for children running every weekday in the summer. There will also be two Bay Atlantic Symphony concerts.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.
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