The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

NEWSLETTER No. 2 March 1987 Dear Friend of the Library "A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad." - Bob Edwards "Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught." - Winston Churchill Most people probably take the Memorial Library for granted and don't want to be bothered about how it operates or how it compares with others in the Lower Mainland (or in the Province), provided it supplies their needs efficiently and courteously. There is nothing really wrong with this? in fact it indicates that the Library Board and especially the staff are doing a good job -AND THEY ARE! However there are a few things which Friends of the Library may like to know about West Vancouver's library service. We hope that those who heard Library Board Chairman Bob Wyckham's excellent presentation at our February meeting won't mind seeing this information a second time. HOW GOOD IS OUR LIBRARY? Figures prepared in 1985 compared the operations of eight public libraries - Burnaby, New Westminster, North Vancouver City, North Vancouver District, Port Moody, Richmond, Vancouver and West Vancouver - and West Vancouver's performance in this Greater Vancouver Library Federation ranked high in almost every aspect of its operation. Our Library came First in the number of volumes per capita; First in overall utilization (reference and circulation) per capita? Second in staff productivity (transactions per staff member), including a productivity increase of 25% between 1981-1984, made possible by automation, with a saving of $125,000 per year; Third in information enquiries per capita, behind Vancouver (which as the major public library resource in the Province draws 25% of its enquiries from beyond its boundaries) and New Westminster (where much of the use of its fine reference collection comes from Burnaby residents); Fourth in loans per volume, where the number was still equal to the average for the whole Federation, and, remember, on the highest number of volumes per capita (our "First")? and Fifth in library hours of service - while our total opening hours were fewer than four other libraries', this means we were actually doing more per hour than they were! THIS ALL CONFIRMS THAT ON A PER CAPITA BASIS OUR LIBRARY IS BY FAR THE BUSIEST URBAN PUBLIC LIBRARY IN THE PROVINCE.