The New Canaan Library

Collectionsnew Canaan Library, is The community's platform for lifelong learning, provides expansive collections of print and digital content. It also provides an array of subscription research databases and museum passes. These collections serve to reflect and anticipate The community's interests, allowing for both cursory and deep explorations of ideas and concepts. The collections support The community's pursuit of self-directed learning, cultural appreciation, and recreational experiences. A professional team actively manages The collections, to ensure that they are fresh and, importantly, that they meet The needs of readers and learners. In addition, we provide readers' advisory services to individuals and groups. In line with our values, The collections are broad, diverse, and inclusive and our lending and other policies aim to ensure equitable access to all. Our customer service team facilitates access to The collections and ensures that materials are well maintained and returned to The shelves swiftly to ensure maximum enjoyment of The resource by The community. Our current collection of print materials includes 38,069 books for adults, 35,252 for children, and 6691 for teens. Our audio-visual collection contains 7604 items for adults and teens and 2539 items for children. To provide digital content, we directly purchase and make available 15,667 titles (17,328 copies) ebooks and eaudiobooks. However, our digital collections are literally innumerable as we also provide free access to our members to a vast amount digital content through a several pay per use subscription platforms serving up a variety of e-content (books, magazines, streaming media) that grows and changes continually. Fy 2023 was a very unusual year for The Library and The circumstances had a considerable impact on The usage rates of The collections. From july to december, access to our facility was made difficult for borrowers due to The ongoing construction on our site. For 8 weeks from december to february we were closed with only digital borrowing available to our members. We re-opened mid-february in a brand-new purpose-built facility and since that time have seen enthusiastic engagement with our collections, learning programs and other services.despite being closed / having poor access to our facility for 8 months, we saw only a 5.67% decrease in our print circulation for The year. Since re-opening in february, we've seen circulation rise significantly and expect book borrowing to be up once again for fy 24. Additionally, we are seeing a steady decline in The use of dvds and audio books in line with expectations as these formats are superseded by streaming media.

Space:providing a variety of accessible spaces for individuals and groups from our community to meet and work is an integral part of offering. Our community is enriched by a very high level of volunteerism, community groups and non-profits. These groups contribute to an exceptionally strong sense of community through their various missions, which are both social and philanthropic in nature. The Library's provision of meeting spaces for The board meetings, committee work, etc. Of these groups is critical to our role as an anchor institution in The town. Space to work, read, and research for individuals and groups (students, book groups, etc.) Is another important element of The Library's unique role as provider of inclusive, accessible spaces. Library spaces are of course also critical infrastructure housing our collections and for program and service delivery.to maintain clean well-functioning space requires significant monetary and human resource. Our New facility opened in february 2023 and has been designed to be efficient and sustainable. The New facility is, however, extremely popular with The community and has an increased level of use and consequent cleaning and wear.

Learning programsadultsas The community's platform for lifelong learning, The Library provides The infrastructure and programs to support The growth of creativity and imagination in our youth and adult populations. While our collections provide for self-directed learning, our programs offer immersive and experiential learning opportunities. We strive to support and promote our community's pursuit of lifelong learning through thoughtful and varied programs designed by our professional librarians and aligned to our mission, values, strategic goals and curricular priorities. Attendees can actively participate in intellectually enriching content while building bonds with one another through The shared learning experience. We deliver professionally planned curricula of learning experiences for our adult audience which are designed to ensure that many different styles of learning are available including lectures, workshops, classes, hands-on, maker, discussion groups and more.adult programming for The year ending june 2023 varied considerably throughout The year due to The building challenges and closure of The first 8 months. However, once we opened our New facility in february 2023, we reignited learning and significantly ramped up our instructional offerings.new Canaan Library offered 226 total programs and classes to our adult community in fy 2023. 8300 individuals attended these programs. 70% of The year's adult learning programs and 77% of annual adult participation occurred in The four months after re-opening. Of particular note: we welcomed high profile speakers such as: misty copeland, marie yovanovitch, and matthew desmond to audiences of 300 each we partnered with several non-profits to host important cultural events such as: women of afghanistan and healing asian hate we implemented New instructional courses to increase technological literacy, covering topics such as: microsoft office, google suite, and website creation we increased hands-on learning opportunities in our makerlab, with popular programs including print making, 3d printing, and design we increased librarian-led book discussions from one to six groups, averaging 12 participants per group we partnered with The local ymca to offer free weekly yoga & tai chi classes, averaging 40 participants per session we curated environmental education programs covering topics such as native seeds, composting, and The edible schoolyard project families (children and teens)our learning programs for children 0-12 are professionally developed and delivered as part of a curriculum of literacy development that includes developmentally appropriate, scaffolded learning experiences for children from 6 months five years and then further age appropriate literacy development for older children with book groups and a summer reading program which is both wildly popular among our families and ensures that students in our local schools do not lose ground on their reading comprehension during The summer months. All our programs for children support our local families' learning/literacy goals and supplement The formal learning in our schools.in addition to The literacy development programing, we also offer a breadth of other learning and cultural programs including a maker curriculum, numeracy, science, as well as strong arts programming with music and visual arts.during fy 23 our families team increased in-person programming attendance, delivering 540 learning programs for children and 91 for teens, with 17456 and 1660 attendees, respectively. The team began programming in our New space in february after finishing a successful season of summer and fall programs. We've given dozens of tours and have helped families and educators become comfortable with The New space. Highlights of our programming for families include: our summer reading 2023 kickoff had over 500 people attending. To date, 1114 children and teens participated field trips from local schools introduced 327 students to The New Library and gave them a sample of what Library programs look like we began to offer more programming for families with disabilities, including a monthly parenting meet-up and adaptive programs for The elementary age group we brought back a full storytime schedule in february '23, moving The classes back indoors in our New space and serving over 6,000 parents and children under The age of 5 teen focus2023 saw us entering our New building and finally giving teens a space of their own. We've seen teens using The Library more through their own space as well as exploring and enjoying The quiet study space and meeting rooms on our top floor. Our programming also began to expand with The opening of The New space. We have since run several college readiness classes, role-playing game clubs, writing classes, and cooking classes, along with keeping up our tween book group. The place where our teens have shined is in helping to volunteer in The Library, be it by participating in tab (teen advisory board), by helping to run or plan programs, and through our teen volunteer program. This fiscal year, 78 teens participated in our teen volunteer program, donating more than 1610 hours of their time.makerlabmakerlab usage exploded after opening our New space in february 2023. We have hosted 290 trainings/sessions for our sewing machines, laser cutter, 3d printer and other makerlab technologies. Our technology education librarian has hosted over 24 open makerlab sessions with 614 people attending including children, teens, and parents. Interest in The makerlab continues to grow as we see more than just teens and children using The space.