At its meeting on Monday, July 21, Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry (SDG) Counties council received the annual library report from SDG Library staff. The report highlighted many of the key successes from the region’s 15 library branches in 2024.
According to Director of Library Services Rebecca Luck, the library welcomed 108,031 visitors in 2024, issued 2,100 new library cards, and had more than 6,300 active borrowers.
Luck said that because of the hard work of the library’s 48 staff members and approximately 60 volunteers, the library had another successful year.
The SDG Library boasted 214,681 physical items and 121,446 digital items circulated. Residents also logged more than 7,800 hours of public computer use last year.
Luck said the library had expanded its collections to meet community needs by adding phonics kits, nature backpacks, board games, online arts and crafts tutorials, and children’s language learning tools.
Compared to 2023, the library saw increases in attendance across all age groups in 2024: up 11.6 per cent for adults, 16.1 per cent for children, and a significant rise of 46.9 per cent among teens.
The library offered 1,372 different programs, drawing approximately 15,000 individuals to branches across the region. Some of the more successful programs included the SDG Reads program, One Book, One Community, with 89 participants, and the TD Summer Reading Club, with over 1,000 individuals participating.
Additionally, Luck said that the library partnered with the Glengarry Memorial Hospital in Alexandria to bring services directly to long-term care patients. The library also officially eliminated overdue fines, reinforcing its commitment to providing equitable and accessible services for residents.
Using the Valuing Ontario Libraries Toolkit, which assigns dollar values to free public services, Luck reported that the SDG Library generated an estimated $16.4 million in community economic benefit. This equals approximately $228 per permanent resident or $601 per household.
Luck said that for every hour opened to the public, the library generated $431 in economic benefit. She concluded that for every dollar invested, the SDG Library returned $6.21 in community value, or a return of 621 per cent.
