UPDATE: MV Library Circulation Could Skyrocket

As the City Council on Tuesday night, the members also learned that as a result of the Santa Clara County Library District decision to charge a non-resident fee of $80, the circulation could increase by nearly 300,000 items.

That's almost 20 percent year-to-year, Library Services Director Rosanne Macek told Mountain View Patch Wednesday.

Macek said she expected that a large number of the 9,300 or so users of the Los Altos Library—the closest county library—already used the Mountain View library. However, those users checked out about 300,000 items a year from the Los Altos Library.

"If they come back and check out that amount from the Mountain View library, we could be impacted," she said, because that's a large number of items to physically shelve. Macek added, however, "I don’t expect that [increase], because their collection is different."

Macek explained to Patch that the Los Altos Library has a large science collection, which could be a draw for local residents.

Another aspect that could help, the Joint Powers Authority Board of the county library system decided on June 2 to exempt students who attend schools whose districts overlap with the boundaries of the Santa Clara County Library District.

Still, the worst-case scenario could mean an increase of 340,000 items circulated, 20 percent of the almost 1.7 million items circulated in and out of the MVPL for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010.

Macek has said that they'll "wait and see" what the data looks like in the library's first quarter.

However at the council session, she didn't discard the possibility of the library taking drastic measures to cope.

"If we see that our circulation does go up substantially, we may consider charging," she said.