The Reading Public Library in Pennsylvania lent out 182,228 items last year and counted 27,452 people at its programs, according to the 2026 annual appeal letter on its own website. Those numbers are circulating again this week for a reason that has little to do with 2025: they are being paired with a gift from Taylor Swift that landed on the library’s shelves 15 years ago this month.
In October 2011, Swift, then a country star who had grown up in nearby Wyomissing, donated 6,000 books valued at $68,000. Librarians unveiled them on Thursday, October 13, 2011, without the singer, who could not attend. Her representatives told library officials she wanted to help libraries that were short of money, and coverage at the time tied the gift to the library’s fight to keep its doors open.
What the 2011 gift actually was
The donation was put together with the children’s publisher Scholastic, and the titles were aimed at children and young adults. Swift did not pick them; local librarians chose the list. Each donated copy carried a white star on its spine and a sticker inside the cover marking it as her gift, and patrons could begin borrowing them that Saturday. The plan was to split the books evenly across the library’s branches and then make them available to borrowers throughout Berks County.
Some quick arithmetic puts the size in perspective. At $68,000 for 6,000 books, the average value works out to about $11.33 a volume. Measured against last year’s lending, 6,000 books equal roughly 3.3% of the 182,228 items the library circulated in 2025, a single donation that would amount to about 12 days of current borrowing at the 2025 average of roughly 499 items a day.
An old library with a newer job
For readers outside Pennsylvania, Reading is a city of about 88,000 people some 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia, and it was described as economically struggling at the time of the gift. Its public library began as a subscription library in 1763. The current main building dates from 1913 and was paid for by Andrew Carnegie, and three branches followed: Northwest in 1939, and Northeast and Southeast in 1974. A city bookmobile has run since 1951. The library also acts as the district library center for all of Berks County, and in 2018 it received the National Medal for Museum and Library Service from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Two years of the library’s own numbers
The library publishes a short scorecard with each annual appeal, and comparing the 2025 and 2026 letters shows a shift in how people use the building. Here is the year-on-year change, with the working shown:
- Items circulated: 203,312 in 2024 to 182,228 in 2025, down 21,084, or 10.4%.
- Program attendees: 29,498 to 27,452, down 2,046, or 6.9%.
- 30-minute computer sessions: 77,812 to 99,569, up 21,757, or 28%.
- Early childhood literacy participants: 3,207 to 3,432, up 225, or 7%.
The computer figure stands out. At 30 minutes each, 99,569 sessions add up to about 49,785 hours of public computer time in a single year. The library’s appeal describes digital literacy help, free computer access and Wi-Fi among the services residents rely on, alongside storytimes, senior outreach and after-school programs for teens at all four locations.
One caution on the viral framing. The library’s appeal does not credit Swift’s 2011 donation for its 2025 figures, and no source we read connects the two. The books were a one-time gift of children’s and teen titles; the 2025 numbers describe a whole library system’s lending, events and computer use 14 years later. The honest link is narrower: a library that was struggling in 2011 is still open, still lending, and still asking its community for support.
That request is the concrete thing on the table now. The 2026 appeal letter is live on the library’s website, and the main branch at 100 South Fifth Street in Reading opened late, at 11 a.m., on Friday, October 16.
Further reading
Image: Paolo Villanueva, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
