“It’s timeless, it’s beautiful!” says Sara Wedell, explaining why Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night remains the Ann Arbor District Library’s most popular art print. Even with five copies available, in mid-February twenty-four people were waiting for a chance to enjoy it for two months.
The AADL has been lending art prints for forty-five years, making them “our longest-standing unusual item to borrow!” emails the enthusiastic Wedell. As AADL’s collections manager, she oversees anything borrowable—books, of course, but also telescopes, sewing machines, and thermal cameras.
Recent additions include more board games and jigsaw puzzles. They’d discussed expanding those collections in the past, Wedell says, but held back because “it was going to be a big-time investment [to buy them] and processing investment” to track checkouts and returns. Then, “during the pandemic the tide turned, and we were, like, ‘If there was ever a time for puzzles and games, it’s now!’”
Giant Connect 4 topped the games list on the library’s “Most Requested Items of 2023,” followed by the strategy card game Wingspan. The 1,000-piece Lego Minifigure was the most popular puzzle, with the 500-piece Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth as runner-up.
Books are not forgotten, but the national bestseller list rules here: For two years running, the AADL’s most checked-out fiction title has been Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry, while last year’s nonfiction list was headed by Prince Harry’s woe-is-me memoir, Spare.
The expanding selection of non-traditional items, and explosion of on-site events, reflects libraries’ reinvention of themselves as community centers with a bookish bent.
In part, that’s because their role as providers of information has greatly diminished; schoolkids can now ask ChatGTP, instead of the reference librarian, when the Civil War began.
“As the community’s needs change, so too does the library,” emails communications and marketing manager Rich Retyi. That includes “the evolution of our physical and digital partnerships, programming … and a dozen other areas where the library has helped something unique happen for the community.”
The new collections bring new challenges. How does the library staff check for damage when the returned item is not a book but a box of Keva wooden building planks? “We don’t count them,” Wedell explains. “We weigh them.”
The condition of jigsaw puzzles is crowdsourced. A friendly sticker on the box advises, “Missing a piece? It happens!” and provides an email address. Patrons frequently send in photos of a puzzle complete except for the missing pieces.
Wedell says even then, they remain grateful and gracious. “I’ve never had anyone say, ‘This was missing a piece, and it ruined my day.’”
