Library use remains strong as council backs archival project

By Ian MacKay

Local residents continue to make strong use of the Rosetown Centennial Library, council members were told.

Councillors reviewed 2025 statistics from Wheatland Regional Library at their March 16 meeting and approved $500 from a bequest to support archival work at the branch.

The local library board requested funding from the McDougall bequest to purchase archive-grade storage boxes for a collection of photos dating from the 1980s to 2005, donated by The Rosetown Eagle, board chair Cindy Cadieux said in a letter.

The Wheatland report shows 947 residents — about 38 per cent of Rosetown’s population — hold library cards. They borrowed nearly 10,275 physical items and checked out more than 11,400 digital items through the Library2Go system.

Members also took part in winter and summer reading programs. The Dalmeny branch won the 2025 Wheatland Reading Cup.

Rosetown users participated in five seasonal programs and took home 31 tree seedlings through the Neighbourhood Forest program last spring.

“Through times of economic turbulence, libraries become more valuable to their communities, as made evident by the almost 200,000 visits and 2,000 library programs offered across the region,” Wheatland director Kim Hebig said in a letter.

At the local level, more than 15,550 books were borrowed from the Rosetown branch in 2025, according to a report from Wheatland representative Sharon Clark to the Feb. 17 council meeting.

“Our library is in the top five branches behind the cities of Warman and Martensville,” Clark wrote.

The branch recorded more than 7,374 visits during the year, while staff answered 1,175 reference questions and 1,269 information inquiries about local services, businesses and surrounding rural municipalities.