Lots Happening at St. Mary’s Libraries in 2025
St. Mary’s County Library recently release its 2025 annual report, marking what it called “a great year!”
Highlights in the report include:
- 1,027,029 items checked out
- 218,328 digital items were checked out in FY2025
- 331,501 visits to libraries in FY2025
- Provided 1,749 free events that 35,535 people attended. (Attendance for events was up 15% over last year.)
- Participated in 185 outreach events reaching 10,222 additional community members
- 1,876 groups used the meeting rooms, and 5,525 individuals or groups used study rooms for a total of 7,692 sessions
- 35,436 active card holders
- Computers had nearly 33,000 sessions logged
- 2,589 mobile hotspots checked out to customers
On July 1, St. Mary’s County Library officially went fine free. The new fine-free policy will ensure that all St. Mary’s residents have access to the library’s resources and services, while eliminating the financial barrier of overdue fines.
The Mobile Library team held 136 community stops, and with help from staff, attended 319 events throughout the county. The libraries visited over 18,000 community members this year.
Lexington Park Library raised $96,000 for a new family-focused Makerspace. A matching TEDCO grant was awarded in mid-2025 that will allow the space to start construction in early 2026. Lexington Park Library has already purchased many of the pieces of equipment for the Makerspace including pottery wheels, chompsaw, glowforge, large format printer, and so much more. Watch for upcoming events to try out the equipment.
St. Mary’s County Library launched Perks Partners in January 2025. If you are a current library card holder, you can now visit 22 local businesses to receive 10% off your purchase. (Some exclusion may apply.) All you have to do is show your library card (or your card in the library app) at the time of purchase.
“Fiscal Year 2025 was a successful year for St. Mary’s County Library,” said Michael Blackwell, director of St. Mary’s County Library. “We continued to be heavily visited in our buildings, and our mobile library made more stops and increased outreach and checkouts more than ever before. We had a record number of digital checkouts, with our Palace app offering many always-available audiobooks and Audible content never available to libraries before. Our programming served county residents of all ages, with our many storytimes in particular promoting lifelong learning from the earliest age. Our Makerspace at Leonardtown Library was complemented by adding new equipment at Lexington Park Library to start up a new youth-oriented space. Our free meeting and study rooms were used thousands and thousands of times, offering quiet spaces for learning and reflection or community engagement. I’m pleased and proud that in our 75th year, we are as strong a support to community as ever and poised to meet your information and entertainment wishes for another century.”
