For Immediate Release: March 10, 2006

Bay Area Libraries Celebrate
National Library Week, April 2 - April 8

Oakland, CA. -- Last year, the 116,000-plus public libraries in the United States welcomed over 1.2 billion visitors through their doors - more than five times the number of people who attended U.S. professional and college football, baseball, basketball and hockey games combined .

Bay Area libraries continue to attract visitors in record numbers as well. Last year, there were over 17.5 million visits to the public libraries serving the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco. In addition, over 23.5 million books, videos, audio books, CDs, DVDs and other items were loaned to Bay Area library customers.

Bay Area residents continue to utilize libraries for free Internet access as well. Last year, the Bay Area libraries' 1,200 plus Internet terminals provided library users with more than 225,000 hours of free high-speed Internet access.

Bay Area libraries continue to be the place to go for book clubs, summer reading programs for teens, concerts, story times for children and much, much more.

This year's National Library Week is scheduled for April 2 - 8, 2006. To celebrate the event, the Bay Area Library and Information System (BALIS) is spearheading a multi-media campaign throughout April to highlight the contributions of libraries to our community and encourage even greater library usage through the campaign theme, " Your library card. Get it.Use it ."

BALIS's campaign will include colorful signs on over 180 buses, public service announcements on Bay Area radio stations and movie ads and trailers on over 100 theater screens throughout the Bay Area - all highlighting this year's theme, "Your Library Card...Get it! Use it!"

Members of BALIS are the Alameda Free Library, Alameda County Library, Berkeley Public Library, Contra Costa County Library, Hayward Public Library, Livermore Public Library, Oakland Public Library, Pleasanton Public Library and San Francisco Public Library. To learn more about BALIS and its members, visit www.baylibraries.org/. To learn more about what your local Oakland Public Library is doing for National Library Week, see www.oaklandlibrary.org.

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