King County Library System sets digital download record

File this under the category of “no surprise”: During the pandemic, a lot of us stayed home and downloaded books from the library. And the result was a record-setting year for King County Library System, which for the first time surpassed 7 million digital checkouts in a year in 2020.

According to the digital reading platform Rakuten OverDrive, KCLS patrons checked out 7,408,428 digital titles last year, up 30.5 percent from last year and ranking the library No. 2 in the U.S. (behind the Los Angeles Public Library) and No. 3 in the world (behind the Toronto Public Library and LAPL). Both rankings echo the 2019 results. On a per capita basis, KCLS was the highest in the U.S. last year, according to the library system’s news release.

Here are the five most-requested electronic titles for KCLS in 2020:

1) “So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo

2) “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling

3) “Becoming” by Michelle Obama

4) “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens

5) “Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell

Seattle Public Library, with more than 4 million digital checkouts, ranked 10th in the U.S.