Retiring Guy's Digest: Eau Claire County: A Half-Century of Growth in Library Use

Part 18 of a county-by-county series.

City and County of Eau Claire:

Population and Circulation, 1960-2009

Source: Wisconsin Public Library Service Data (1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2009)

Once again, we have this 1960 spike in circulation, which occurs at libraries reporting a significantly above-average percentage of juvenile circulation.

1960 Circulation

Source: Wisconsin Public Library Service Data (1960, 2009)

Mystery solved. Just as I suspected. Here's what I found while searching the L. E. Phillips' website for historical info: the 1960 annual report! Thank you thank you thank you to the staff members who digitized this and the many other documents found here. (Circulation includes the high school, junior high, and grade school libraries.)

City and County of Eau Claire, 1970-2009

The city/county division of per capita circulation figures should be taken with a grain of salt. In 2009, for example, Eau Claire's L. E. Phillips Memorial Public Library reported 302,240 nonresident circulations out of a total of 1,062,711, or 28% of the total.

But as you can see from the table below, the City of Eau Claire's public library has always tallied the lion's share of circulation in Eau Claire County.

(I'll have to read The Public Library in Eau Claire to see if there's any mention of a county library system. The county's population distribution makes it a good candidate for this form of governance and funding model. But then maybe someone will set me straight as to why it was never considered to be a good idea.)

Eau Claire County public libraries.