Collection Equity: Tuttle Library

We are a small rural library located in the southwest corner of New Hampshire and we have a population of 2,600 residents as of the 2010 United States Census. Our annual operating budget from the town is $173,852.00. We recently started Friends of the James A. Tuttle Library a 501 (c) 3 non-profit that we hope will generate funds in the future. The demographic in Antrim, NH are as follows: 97.4% Caucasian, 2.6% other including Black, Asian, and Native American. We are an older community with an average age of 43.9 Antrim has a Main Street dotted with small businesses, a library, a police department, and a brick town hall. The community of Antrim is an idyllic New England small town. Although idyllic we have had an uptick of suicides and drug misuse in the past few years and now we have many grandparents who are the primary caregivers of their grandchildren. We would use the Collection Equity Award to purchase new medical books to update our medical collection. We do not have the funds to update our non- fiction particularly medical, so we try to purchase a minimum of two non-fiction titles a month. The books in our medical section are extremely outdated and we would like that section to be the primary focus and our secondary focus will be on teen and children’s health. We will purchase titles regarding all aspects of health from exercise to addition.