According to a report by the Southeast Regional Library board, the Carlyle library has outperformed all others in the southeast region.
The board met on Tuesday, April 30 where they issued the result of the 2013 needs assessment for Carlyle and the surrounding area. The board highlighted several positives for the town's library, one being the high circulation of the town's library. This highpoint was however tainted by drastically low circulation numbers found in libraries of other towns and communities within southeast Saskatchewan. Branch statistics show that although Carlyle's library circulation has consistently decreased in the last three years it also improved in other areas.
Circulation decreased to 9171 in 2012 coming from 9703 in 2011 and 11,307 in 2010.The town has however increased in program attendance and program occurrences in these years. Stats show that although Carlyle program occurrences decreased to 42 in 2011 coming from 64 the year before; the town picked up and achieved 52 occurrences in 2012. The trend was a similar in program attendance as well, 2010 saw a solid attendance of 479. While in 2011 attendance fell to 264 but increased to 329 in 2012.
The Southeast Regional Library has however organized a system for communities to develop an action plan to address issues concerning their own libraries. This involves the regional Library gathering information about the needs, challenges, assets and options of the neighbourhood to better develop programs more suited for the community. This comes on the heels of previous plans the Carlyle library had to improve the children's area by way of a fundraiser. Town council member Jennifer Sedor said the town's library is unique in the sense that one side is filled with books and the other half is empty and is suitable for any form of renovation.
"It is the perfect blank slate for the living room of the community and basically what we've had for a number of years is a children's section that's cramped in the corner of the library- and we all of a sudden have this huge population of young families in the community, so our kids section is needing to grow with our kids," she said.
"So we have the perfect opportunity to switch it over and create this fabulous, magical, really fresh opportunity on the other side of the library and that's what we're hoping to accomplish.
The needs assessment survey has however outlined a vision for libraries across the region to move from the traditional idea of a library to a concept of facilitating the community in various ways. The idea is to transform the library into the "living room of the community." According to the assessment, Carlyle residents' perception of the library varies. The public library provides valuable services to the community, whether it is by loaning books, encouraging young children to read or providing access to computers the survey detailed. Other aspects of the report highlight the libraries low usage by the community.
The action plan that's developed will be shared with the town's municipality and a review of the plan will be done in three years.
