Waterford bookworms best in country

Waterford readers are the nation’s bookworms

Dublin may have Joyce and Sligo can boast Yeats, but when it comes to appreciating the written word, Waterford has the most avid bookworms in the country.

Waterford city libraries had the highest number of users per capita last year, the three branches collectively recording 6,498 visits per 1,000 of the population, almost twice the national average of 3,335.

In total, there were almost 15.5m visits to the country’s 359 branch libraries and two dozen mobile libraries in 2013.

Cork City had the next highest usage with 6,124 visits per 1,000 people. Dublin city was also among the top five but while that might hint that the proximity enjoyed by city dwellers is the deciding factor, that doesn’t account the fact that Leitrim and Wexford held third and fourth place respectively.

The lowest usage rate was in Kilkenny with just 1,389 visits per 1,000 of the population and Donegal and Roscommon were the only other two counties where numbers fall below 2,000.

The popularity of Waterford city’s libraries may have something to do with the selection of reading materials on offer as they spent more on stock than any other library last year — €3.26 per head of population compared to a national average of €1.48, and 16 times the €0.20 spent in Galway county.

However, when it comes to recreating the library experience at home, the top borrowers are in Cork, where six books and two other items such as CDs and DVDs were issued for every man, woman, and child in the city last year, compared with an national average of 3.5 books and 0.6 other items.

Offaly library users, meanwhile, are the nation’s top surfers, using 1,745 internet sessions per 1,000 of the population, more than three times the national average of 508 and 10 times the 171 sessions in Donegal.

The list of the top 10 most borrowed books last year was dominated by works for children with the top six all titles in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by author and cartoonist Jeff Kinney.

Strumpet City by James Plunkett was next, and was the only work of adult fiction to make the top 10. In eighth place was Save Pudding Wood, another children’s book, by Nick Schon, and the last two places went to The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by author for teens, Suzanne Collins.