SPRINGFIELD, OH – Are you a book lover? Maybe movies and music are more your forte? If so, here’s a wonderful event! During the second weekend of June, area residents will have a chance to look through some 25,000 used books, CD’s, DVD’s and more and help out the Clark County Summer Reading Program, a project of the Clark County Public Library. The annual sale is put on by The Friends of the Clark County Library.
Each summer the reading program has special events at local libraries to entertain school age children and encourage them to read not just during the the school year but during the summer and all year long. The Friends of the Library, founded in 1990, has donated about $78,000 over the last 26 years.
The sale, held this year at the United Senior Services, 125 W. Main, Springfield, starts Friday, June 9, at 4pm for members of The Friends of the Library only, runs all day Saturday 9am to 3pm and finishes Sunday from 1pm to 4pm. Anyone can join the Friends starting at just $5.00 a year for students, $10 for an individual and $20 for a family. You can join the Friends Friday, June 9, the first day of the sale and join the fun.
Want a real bargain, a way to get a ton of books for next to nothing? Come Sunday when anyone can fill a Kroger paper grocery bag for just $3.00! Kroger bags are free but you can bring your own bag of equivalent size if you like. Easily the best bargain is the Clark County Library bag. If you have a Clark County Library book bag, you can pay $3.00 just once and fill it up as many times as you wish. You can literally fill your car’s trunk with books for next to nothing on Sunday. These bags will be available for sale all weekend.
Aside from the sale, here’s a question, which of our 50 state checks outs the most items per person per year at their libraries? Ohio! Our 20.3 library transactions for each Ohioan annually leads the nation. Congratulations to all of us here in the Buckeye State. This number does include computer use, request for information, DVD’s, CD’s and games.
But wait, there’s more! Ohioans average 7.5 visits to their libraries per year. That is the highest per-capita use in America and is an astounding 51 percent above the national average. Wow!
“These libraries are critical. Everybody loves the library,” Ohio Governor John Kasich said recently. “These things can be a hub where people who don’t have the resources can go and begin to develop some skills.”
I’m kind of a numbers guy so here are a few more cool facts. Our state has a two year budget and it includes $794 million for the library systems. The experts break that down to $2.88 for each transaction and puts Ohio 41st in the USA, 68 cents below the national average. I had no idea numbers like this existed, by the way. Fascinating, to say the least.
Columbus has one of the best, if not the best library system in the nation. They win award after award. One thing they do to earn respect is serve 68,500 summer reading program participants. That was in 2015 they they also tallied 83,000 visitors to the homework help centers and had 25,600 K-3 school kids in their reading buddies program. Whew, that’s a lot of activity.
Locally, the Friends of the Clark County Library and the CCPL work on a much smaller scale but the mission is the same as the Columbus Library’s.
With the debuting of the main branches’ massive improvement project isn’t it time to stop in, look around and check out books or audio-visual material? And if you want to buy books or audio-visual material remember the big sale June 9-11.
The Friends of the Clark County Public Library is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to promote and assist the library as a cultural, educational and recreational asset for the residents of Clark County. It depends solely on volunteers. The Friends hold various events to raise money for the Summer Reading Program and other literary endeavors.