The Sanibel Public Library has earned a national “Star Library” award, marking the fourth time that it has been recognized as one of the best libraries in the country by the Library Journal.
“It’s a testament of support from the community and board who encourages us to do innovative things people are interested in,” Sanibel Public Library Executive Director Margaret Mohundro said. “We are really proud of it. It’s a credit to the staff who work really hard.”
The Library Journal rates public libraries in the United States based on selected per capita data. This year, only 259 of 7,409 libraries received three, four or five star designations. The star libraries in Florida included Sanibel, New Port Richey and Lake Park.
“Every year we are at, or near the top. We get really good support from the community,” she said.
Mohundro said the rating is based on such areas as the number of people walking through the library’s door, number of program attendees and the number of books checked out.
In addition, the Library Journal also based the star rating on electronic material. At the Sanibel Public Library, more than 43,000 eBooks have been checked out in the past six years, which includes 9,000 audiobooks.
Other eShelf services include Mango, an online language learning tool and Kanopy, a popular on-demand video streaming app. In addition, the Sanibel Public Library was the first public library in Florida to offer “Tech It Out,” a kiosk that enables patrons to borrow MacBook Air and Dell laptops at the library.
