ERL members saved over $62 million in the past year by borrowing from our libraries

Paul, our Manager - Information Services, has had his statistics hat on the past couple of weeks and shared some interesting comparisons....

Last year we had 2,042,407 people come through the doors of our libraries – this works out to 39,277 folks turning up each week. To put it into perspective it means that we are filling The Gabba, the Brisbane Cricket Ground, to capacity each Saturday for an entire year or playing to a sold-out crowd at Docklands stadium for 38 consecutive nights.

We have 126,444 members which is the equivalent of the entire membership of Collingwood and Hawthorn Football Clubs combined. Last year we joined up 15,304 members which is the equivalent of filling the Myer Music Bowl to capacity and still having a thousand people queuing up outside clamouring to get in.

Speaking of cultural institutions we had 91,209 people, large and small, come along to our adult and junior activities. This equates to filling the newly refurbished Hamer Hall at the Arts Centre for 34 nights – beat that KD Lang et al!

And as for loans…… well we have had a terrific year – 3,444,650 items have gone out and come back again. Now if we were to put a monetary value on these items you would get the following set of numbers for the main categories of items that people borrow (I have averaged out the RRP costs of these items):

• Hardback Fiction – 923,000 items @ $20 an item = $18,460,000
• Paperbacks – 226,000 items @$10 an item = $2,260,000
• Non-Fiction – 465,000 items @ $25 an item = $11,625,000
• Picture books – 430,000 items @ $15 an item = $6,450,000
• DVDS – 727,000 items @ $25 an item = $18,175,000
• CDs – 130,000 items @ $20 an item = $2,600,000
• Magazines – 180,000 items @ $8 an item = $1,440,000
• Graphic Novels – 25,000 items @ $30 an item = $750,000
• eBooks – 29,000 items @ $20 an item = $580,000

Which makes a grand total of $62,340,000 that you, our members, have saved themselves by being members of the library…… membership certainly does have its privileges.

Well done everyone!!

Cheers, paul & webgurl