FAIRMONT– Martin County Library Director, Jenny Trushenski, shared with the Martin County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday that overall usage of the county library system was up in 2025.

Trushenski had details to share on all four of the libraries within the county system and said that the report was also shared with the state of Minnesota.

She said that the number of Martin County residents with a library card rose in 2025 and that 5,661 people have a library card, which is 30 percent of the population.

“I always feel like it’s good to mention that for a lot of families, that’s one card per family. If you have a lot of children sometimes it’s easier as a parent to just have one card to check everything out for everyone in your family,” Trushenski said.

Along with that, she said that library visits were up in 2025 with 58,190 visits county-wide, as opposed to 56,419 visits in 2024.

“Of course we can hope that this year that goes up even higher,” Trushenski said.

Commissioner Billeye Rabbe asked if that included Hoopla, a digital offering the library provides, and Trushenski said it only accounted for in-person visits.

Also up were computer usage and WiFi sessions. There were 8,202 public computer sessions and almost 50,000 Wi-Fi sessions.

The next statistic pertaining to the Fairmont library Trushenski was especially excited to share with the board.

“We printed, scanned and copied more than 25,000 pages. That includes tax forms, resumes, lots of Amazon return labels… a lot of legal documents, public assistance, that kind of thing. We also offer notary service,” Trushenski said. “I think that’s a great service that we provide because there isn’t another place in our community to do it,” she said of printing.

Trushenski also had some special statistics to share about the youngest visitors.

“We’re growing readers here in Martin County,” she said. “We had 65,000 children’s material go out. That’s physical materials. And then overall check-outs, including digital, rose from 162,000 last year to 177,000 in 2025 which is a big jump from year to year and we’re proud to see that,” she said.

Trushenski also touched on the fact that the Sherburn library moved to a new location in 2025 due to structural concerns with the former building. It is now housed within the city hall building.

“We got that (move) done with a lot of assistance from Sentence to Serve and we thank them for that. As you can imagine boxes of books are very heavy to move,” Trushenski said.

Also in her report, she touched on the interlibrary loan system and the outreach they do which includes delivering books to schools, daycares, assisted living facilities, the jail and homebound patrons.

Finally, Trushenski touched on the various activities and programs the library puts on, which is also growing.

“Last year the number we ended up with was 366 programs which I kind of love because that’s basically a program for every day of the year but we’re not open every day of the year so you can see how many activities are going on,” she said.

More than 7,000 people attended those programs, which Trushenski said are held for people of every age and ability.

“It’s great to see all the different people coming in the door,” she said.

Many of the programs offered are possible with various grants from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Funds through the state.