Success isn’t about how many people serve you. Success is about how many people you serve.

This just about sums up our philosophy at the Mary Cotton Public Library. The year 2025 was definitely a year that shows a lot of service to our local, regional and statewide library patrons.

To put this into perspective, here’s the stats:

• The library had 2,652 open hours in 2025.

• 1,624 people own a library card (doesn’t include the many family members who use a single card).

• 20,299 people walked through our doors in 2025 to peruse a collection of 29,172 items. Print materials totaled 24,344, physical videos totaled 1,855. Use of electronic materials totaled 4,705 with a total circulation of 50,455.

• MCPL lent our items to other libraries 8,279 times and borrowed 6,158 items upon our patron request via the NEXT courier service and interlibrary loans. Public computers were used 3,141 times with over 4,500 wifi sessions.

Almost 350 separate library programs, story times, outreach story times, meetings and events were attended by 4,460 people. Just ask the preschoolers who their favorite story time person is.

We are very grateful for grants from Wenger-Marel to support early literacy in the community and the American Library Association to improve accessibility at the library, memorials from the families of Clark Meyer, Ruth Tennal and Bill Meister for books, and special contributions from Kiwanis Club of Sabetha to advance children’s services. Contributions and donations collected from local businesses and individuals continue to humble and amaze us all the time, because without this support we would be just another place to find books.

Our own Friends of the Mary Cotton Public Library was the Best Friends of the library group in Kansas in 2025. The group has shown their ongoing support of Summer Reading and improving adult programming.

Success at MCPL means you know how your tax money, contributions, and memorials are being used, stretched to the fullest and making sure that MCPL stays viable, reliable and still the friendliest place to find yourself.