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Within hours of being laid off from a Target warehouse, Jacob Bogie headed to the Sun Prairie Public Library to start looking for a new job.
"Anything," Bogie, 18, said Tuesday as he sat in the library's computer lab and scanned postings on the Internet. "I'm looking for something I can do."
The worse the economy gets, the busier libraries become in Wisconsin and across the nation.
Residents are turning to libraries for free job searches, Internet access, CD and DVD rentals and family entertainment ranging from story hours to play areas (toys included).
"Parents can't afford Disneyland," said Patricia Brady, a teacher who works with low-income students in Syracuse, N.Y., as she played with her two grandchildren in the Sun Prairie library. "This is their new Disneyland."
Increasing numbers of library visitors are checking out books and magazines, too, to avoid racking up bills for purchases and subscriptions.
"I think people are just downsizing," said Tracy Herold, director of the Sun Prairie library, which posted an 8 percent circulation gain in the first 11 months of 2008, the largest since the building opened in 1999.
"Libraries are always a great bargain," said Phyllis Davis, director of the South Central Library System, where circulation through the end of November was up 3 percent in the 41-community library network compared to the same period in 2007.
Branch was closed
The circulation rise was even larger - an average of 5 percent - in the South Central network communities outside of Madison.
Madison's circulation figures are flat, chiefly because Sequoya, its busiest branch, was closed for seven weeks for an expansion. Excluding Sequoya, circulation figures in Madison are up 4 percent, with the largest increases at the Hawthorne, Meadowridge and South Madison branches.