The glory that is PLCH

I tend to brag on the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (PLCH), but I thought I'd give it one more quick little post just to back up my opinion of the awesome with a few numbers.

PLCH's executive director, Kim Fender, published a note a couple of weeks ago touting the killer trifecta that the library system hit this year...

• PLCH was named by Hennen the #7 best library system in the nation in the category of systems serving at least half a million people.  It's their highest ranking from Hennen ever.
• PLCH has the tenth largest collection of all the libraries in the United States - the third largest among public library systems.  In case you were curious, the Library of Congress is the biggest, and Boston and NYC are the bigger publics.
• According to Fender, PLCH also ranked #10 among public libraries in terms of number of items checked out in 2009.  She doesn't quote a source for that, though, so linking and fisking her data is a little tough.

The note says that PLCH is the only library system to find itself in the top ten of all three lists.

In other words, our library system frickin' rocks.

Take advantage of your local branch if you're in town, woncha?