Fascinating Facts: January-March 2020

Written by Erin, staff member, Collection Development

We have something to tell you. We love you. You make our branches hum with activity and vibrancy, and your visits to our website make our hearts sing. We miss seeing you, but love hearing from you. 

And now we want to share some of the wonderful ways we came together from January through March, 2020.

Visits and new registrations

In just three months, we had over 743,800 in-person visits to our Libraries. This is quite impressive, because we closed our doors on March 16 to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

We also welcomed more than 6,698 new library card holders to Halifax Public Libraries. In March, 3,355 of our new library members signed up using our new online Library Card Registration form, opens a new window.

Our website was also buzzing with activity—we had over 632,500 visits to our site.

Thank you for being part of our community!

Borrowing

Halifax Public Libraries offers a large variety of collection materials: from books, DVDs, and magazines to radon detectors, musical instruments, and many things in between. Material from our branches and kiosks were borrowed more than 922,000 times between January and March!

Our digital collections are also popular. OverDrive, opens a new window had over 249,500 check outs, while hoopla, opens a new window came in at more than 15,000 borrows, and RBdigital (now E-Magazines on OverDrive) with over 30,200.

Interesting observations

Top searched titles: Three of the top searched titles were Where the Crawdads Sing, opens a new window by Delia Owens, Little Women, opens a new window by Louisa May Alcott, and From the Ashes: My Story of Being Metis, Homeless, and Finding My Way, opens a new window by Jesse Thistle. 

Top searched series: Louise Penny’s mystery series about Chief Inspector Arman Gamache takes the cake as the most searched-for series.  

Most popular blog posts: With the start of the New Year came inspiration to learn new languages, and our How To: Launch into Learning with Rocket Languages, opens a new window post skyrocketed to the top. And we can’t deny how much HRM loves love, especially love found in the stacks—our blog post A Real-Life Library Love Story, opens a new window was our most popular post in February.  

There are so many ways to explore your Library—share your #MyLibrary story with us on social media @hfxpublib.  

We're looking forward to reporting more fascinating facts at the end of June 2020.