The Civic Library of Riva del Garda: A Record-Breaking Year with 18 Thousand More Visitors in 2023

(AGENPARL) – Mon 15 January 2024 Library: more 18 thousand visitors in 2023
RIVA DEL GARDA – In 2023 the civic library of Riva del Garda recorded 68,654 visitors, approximately 18 thousand more than in 2022, for 288 days and 2600 hours of opening to the public.
Statistics, for a library, are never just numbers. They are the result of exciting readings for children, meetings with the author, games, training and educational activities, and much more. Libraries today are experiencing a phase of profound transformation, a new concept of library is spreading, no longer based solely on the conservation of its heritage but projected towards the transformation of its collections and its skills into a service certified as useful by the community, recognition that is affirmed through greater use and attendance of the library.
This is the case of the civic library of Riva del Garda, which in 2023 made a “bang” by recording 68,654 total attendances (around 18 thousand more than in 2022) for a total of 288 actual days open to the public with 2600 hours annual. The month with the greatest influx of users was January, the least frequented was July. The number of loans is very high: 43,753, approximately 6,200 more than in 2022, of which 13 thousand to children and young people up to 15 years of age.
Interlibrary loan – a document exchange service that takes place, at the request of a user, between the library that owns the text and the one where the request is made – has been used 3,700 times (between requests sent to other libraries and requests received) . Through this service, all the libraries in the network respond to the information needs of the community, committing themselves to making the largest part of their assets available for loan. On the other hand, Riva users proved to be particularly active during 2023: 3269 (of which 1841 residents in the Municipality of Riva del Garda) are the people who took advantage of at least one loan during the year, thus taking advantage of the vast and rich heritage of the library: almost 82,800 documents, of which a small part consists of recent acquisitions in the cataloging phase.
Among the many books available, drawing up a ranking of the most read, in first place among those most requested by the adult public we find “Changing Water for Flowers” by the French author Valérie Perrin, while the book most requested to borrow by children is was «A penguin in Trieste» by Chiara Carminati. Among the authors most read by children we find Geronimo Stilton, Walt Disney and Agostino Traini. The adults, however, chose Sveva Casati Modignani and Danielle Steel several times.
During the year just mentioned, there were numerous activities to promote books, readings and meetings aimed at both an adult audience and children and teenagers, some in the form of exhibitions; such as the series of meetings «Traces of ephemeral art», which led participants on a journey in which art, nature, history and territory met, giving life to the creation of artistic objects using mainly recycled materials. The series of events that celebrated the centenary of the birth of Italo Calvino was also highly appreciated by the public, as was the «Writings of the Twentieth Century» meetings, which highlighted and told the public about two highly sensitive female figures such as Goliarda Sapienza and Sibilla Aleramo.
Great success for the chess tournament, the meetings in foreign languages, the Friday and Saturday afternoon games, with many boxes freely available to users; some proposals, then, have recorded a real boom in attendance, such as the presentation of Serena Dandini’s latest book «Chronicles from paradise», with the children’s room packed with enthusiastic readers.
However, the great success of this 2023 highlights not only the value of the library as a means of cultural diffusion and valorisation, but also the need for larger spaces and a greater number of rooms, in consideration of the large turnout and by virtue of the great value of this place for the entire community.
Press office of the Municipalities of Arco and Riva del Garda
Michele Comper
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2024-01-15 10:08:58
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