2024- KCRLB Annual Report and Budget Request

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Gilmour Memorial Library P.O. Box 719 Kittitas, WA 98934 509-968-0226 October 11, 2024 Kittitas County Commissioners 205 West 51"Street Room 110 Ellensburg, WA 98926 Dear Commissioners: The Gilmour Memorial Library is open to the public approximately 1000 hours per year. We currently have 1013 registered cardholders. 574 are City of Kittitas residents and 439 are County. Our services remain free to all patrons. 2024 has been a bit of a challenge because of building issues with the library that caused us to have to move some of our books and movies to the Conference Room at City Hall in June. We continue to serve our patrons and although we have fewer items for checkout at City Hall,we keep a list of requests from next door and bring any requested items over at least once a week, so we make it work. We are getting ready to move into a much larger area at City Hall, and we will be starting that move soon. We will continue to serve our patrons during this move as it is just down the hall. We have 17,820 items available for checkout. On top of that,thanks to the Washington Anytime Library subscription,we have thousands of electronic books,audio books, and now magazines available to our patrons online for computers, smart phones and Kindle Readers. We have 4 public access computers and have wireless Internet services for laptops and smart phones, however since June the computers have been temporarily unavailable until we move into our larger area. We will have 2 available then. We continue to have a lot of children's books checked out each year. Through September 2024, 61%of children's books are checked out by County patrons. In 2023 we participated in the City's"Trunk or Treat". We had 250 children and 500 adults come through our library. Volunteers for the City now have a Haunted House each year and it will be located in the Council Chambers at City Hall this year. We will have the library open during that time and will hand out bags with library information bookmarks and candy. Since we will be right next to the Haunted House,we expect at least 500 kids this year. In December of 2023 we had "Christmas in Kittitas" again. We had 92 kids come see Santa and they were all given a free book courtesy of the Kittitas Friends of the Library. We had close to 100 adults as well. In 2024,we will have Santa at City Hall and will have fun games for the kids to play and once again we will hand out free books and goody bags from Santa. We had our"Cup of Cocoa and a Book to Go" activity with grades K-3 again this year. We had 177 kids come over 4 sessions. They enjoyed it very much and got to make valentine's, eat a cookie,drink cocoa, and pick out a book to keep that was donated by the Kittitas Friends of the Library. This will continue in 2025. Our Summer Activity Program ran 4 weeks this year. We offered in-person and take home packs for our kids that couldn't attend in-person. At the end they received a free book from the Friends of the Library and earned prizes for doing their activities and for reading books during the program. We used the Council Chambers this year and our kids and parents enjoyed it very much!