By DANA POLK / Community Columnist

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving/Christmas/Holiday/New Year!

The end of the year is always busy for me with year-end reports due and being closed for the holidays.

We had a record-breaking year again this year! Our total circulation for the 2015 fiscal year was 64,282 items circulated through our library. That is 8,480 more than last year! We have been busy.

This past year we also did a couple of charity projects. Our Summer Reading theme was about super heroes, and I challenged each age group to be a super hero in our community.

The K5-5th grade reading group had a food drive. The young adult group collected for the Humane Society. The adults collected beanies for preemies to adults.

I am thrilled to say that the each group did an amazing job.

The preemie and baby hats collected went to UAB RNICU. The adult hats went to the homeless in downtown Birmingham.

The Humane Society received dog food and handmade fleece blankets.

Heavenly Smile was the recipient of over 80 pounds of food.

We have an ongoing drive for preemie hats that we regularly donate to UAB RNICU. If you knit, crochet, sew or buy, please consider donating the beanies, and we will get them to the RNICU.

I wanted to continue this theme so at Thanksgiving we offered a couple of weeks of fine amnesty if you brought in a food donation.

That food also went to Heavenly Smile, and it weighed over 120 pounds. Heavenly Smile is a local food bank that is located at Chelsea Center just as you turn onto Highway 39.

Our library community donated over 200 pounds of food last year.  Look for us to do this again!
We are already working on our summer reading program this year. The theme is “On Your Mark, Get Set, Read!”

I already have some exciting programming booked and plan to fill up the summer with awesome programs.
Look for us to start advertising computer literacy classes with the focus on senior adults. We hope to offer this in April, but we don’t have a firm date yet.
This will be an exciting year for our library and our community!