Excerpt: The ample sunlight is one of the many things visitors love about the Vernon Hills library, which has been attracting patrons in record-breaking numbers since its July 10 opening.
Through the end of the month, more than 600 patrons applied for library cards at Aspen, officials said. That's more signup business than the Cook Memorial Library District typically does during an entire month, facility manager Colleen Koebel said.
Circulation has gone through the roof, too. From July 10 to 31, Aspen Drive patrons checked out 43,266 books, DVDs and other materials, officials said.
That's a 36 percent increase over the 31,691 items checked out at the former temporary library in the basement of Vernon Hills' village hall during all of July 2009, said Lauren Cerniglia, Cook Memorial's assistant director of support services.
"We all knew that Aspen was going to be busy, but we had no idea just how popular it was going to be," she wrote in an e-mail.
The Aspen Drive library took more than a year to build at an estimated cost of $7 million. Simultaneously, the historic library in Libertyville's Cook Park has been undergoing a $7 million renovation and expansion that should be completed by November.
Obviously, not everyone has purchased a Kindle, Nook, or iPad.
No comments:
Post a Comment