Booked Up

During the last four years, the number of people using the county library system has increased by nearly 25%. Circulation of library materials has followed suit. Numbers are for fiscal years:

Category 1990 1991 1992 1993 Library visits 5,736,217 6,654,712 6,509,400 7,952,882 Circulation 5,917,431 6,566,009 6,690,446 6,872,953 Reference questions 2,058,838 2,598,035 2,817,291 3,163,631 Program attendance 154,515 157,937 202,395 178,192

LISTEN TO THIS

There’s a lot more than books in today’s library. City- and county-run libraries offer books on tape, compact discs, cassettes and videotapes. Circulation within the county’s busiest library systems during fiscal 1993:

Library system Books Cassettes Videotapes Compact discs County-run 6,872,953 21,639 23,044 9,188 City of Huntington Beach 1,113,381 N/A 15,140 19,189 City of Santa Ana 1,093,557 106,448 27,348 6,957

N/A: Information not available

TURNING TURNSTILES

Busiest county-run libraries by attendance, fiscal year 1993: Branch: Attendance 1. Garden Grove Regional: 965,466 2. Westminster: 845,784 3. Heritage Park, Irvine: 607,527 4. San Juan Capistrano: 597,940 5. El Toro: 495,779 6. Mission Viejo: 334,159 7. University Park, Irvine: 309,653 8. Tustin: 303,581 9. La Habra: 289,881 10. Crown Valley: 275,099

RETIRED TITLES

To make room for new titles, old volumes are often sold through the Friends of the Library Foundation, given to schools and the needy, or simply recycled. A glance at which county libraries retired the most books during fiscal 1993: Branch: Number of discards 1. University Park, Irvine: 7,361 2. Garden Grove Regional: 5,022 3. Cypress: 4,920 4. San Juan Capistrano: 4,370 5. Westminster: 4,357 6. Mission Viejo: 4,342 7. El Toro: 3,729 8. San Clemente: 3,190 9. Heritage Park, Irvine: 3,084 10. Chapman, Garden Grove: 2,877 Source: Orange County Library System, individual city libraries

Researched by APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times