John Grisham, Nora Roberts, Billy goats, tops Holmes library

admin 0 Comments April 13, 2022

MILLERSBURG — John Grisham remains one of the more popular authors among adult book readers in Holmes County, while “Clifford goes to Kindergarten” and “The Three Billy Goats Fluff” were among the most popular children’s books, according to the Holmes County District Public Library director.

“Sooley” by John Grisham, “The Four Winds” by Kristin Hannah and “Legacy” by Nora Roberts were the top book check outs for adults last year, according to Paula Cicconetti, who gave her annual report to the Holmes County commissioners Monday.

A trio of books by Erin Hunter – “Shadows of the Clans,” “Bramblestar’s Storm” and “Fire and Ice” – were the most checked out teen books.

Cicconetti reported 2021 got off to a slow start due to the pandemic, but added the library performed much better in the second half of the year, with more than 300,000 items checked out.

“I am here to update you on your county library, and share some stats that you can be proud of,” Cicconetti said. “We did pretty well in the second half of last year with nearly 3,000 folks attending our events throughout the course of the year.” The library offered 138 different programs.

Skater entertained at library:Doug Brown to present program at Holmes Library

The bookmobile operated differently during the pandemic, and offerings were different as well. Circulation stats on the bookmobile were low for the year, which impacted the overall total of items being checked out. Yet, 321,071 items were checked out in 2021.

Bookmobile, E-books bring library to you

The bookmobile makes more than 100 stops, operating on a six-week rotation. Many of the stops are at parochial schools, as well as East and West Holmes elementary schools and Holmesville Elementary. A weekly stop in Winesburg is one of the busier stops, as are Charm and any of the school stops.

“The interest in E-books continues to grow,” Cicconetti said. “We circulated over 40,000 E-books during 2021.”

The director reported nearly 16,000 cardholders in Holmes County.

Plenty to do this weekend:Tis the season for pancakes to hit the griddle, and egg hunts, too

Computers, WiFi for public

“Our public computer use and our wireless internet continues to be very heavily used and is a great service to community,” Cicconetti said. “In recent years, we’ve expanded our WiFi, so you can now be in the parking lot of the library and have access to the internet on weekends when we’re closed or when folks are on their lunch break getting caught up on their email and stuff like that.”

Some of the new projects at the library in 2021 included the Story Walk, a literacy experience for the community, located at Deer Run Park just outside the library. A new book is featured each month along the paved path. Story Walk is funded through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The library also offers a collection of yard games for check out, including Yardzee, Gigantagrams, Giant Memory, Dominoes, Giant Jenga, Ladder Toss, ring toss, cornhole, Giant Connect 4, kick darts and disc golf discs.

Community partners

The library distributed roughly 3,000 COVID-19 test kits, helping to relieve some of the burden from the county health department.

Cicconetti added HCDPL has partnered with a number of community organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity, Holmes Center for the Arts, a OneEighty display about its programs and providing story times at schools.