Photo: Paul Jerry · CC BY 2.0At 6.4 visits per person served, Shortgrass Library System is busier than 83% of Alberta’s town libraries
A single building, Shortgrass Library System, serves 14,451 people. In 2022 it lent 5.4 items for every person it serves. The figures are for 2022, the latest year Alberta has published openly.
ACivic life#12 of 474 in AlbertaBrooks’s civic life grade, input by input
Civic life in Brooks grades A: #12 of the 474 towns graded in Alberta. All three civic life inputs exist for Brooks: library visits per resident, charities per 1,000 residents and the provincial volunteering rate.
Informal groups and mutual aid go uncounted.
Sources: provincial statistics, the CRA, Statistics Canada.
Brooks mailing addresses hold 44 registered charities
Per 1,000 residents that makes 2.5; the median is 1.3 for Alberta towns and 1.4 for Canada’s. The CRA files each charity under its mailing address, so a service town collects its region’s charities and a suburb or rural municipality few.
37.1%
37.1% of people in Alberta did formal volunteering in 2023, a province-wide estimate between 35.1% and 39.2%; across the ten provinces the rate runs from 25.2% to 40.3%.
Statistics Canada, table 45-10-0039.
Ahead of most of Alberta’s town libraries on 1 of 3 measures
Measured per person served against the 118 town libraries of Alberta’s 2022 statistics.
Town libraries only; regional systems left out.
About 255 visits a day
Everything counted at Shortgrass Library System in 2022: visits, loans and cards.
Brooks’s public library
Closest first, each distance a straight line from the centre of Brooks.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Visits count everyone. A library’s visits include people from neighbouring towns and visitors; the statistics don’t say how many come from Brooks itself.
- Per person served. Rather than Brooks’s census count, the rates use the population the library board says it serves.
Questions about the library and civic life in Brooks
Does Brooks have a public library?
Yes: Brooks Public Library.
How busy is Shortgrass Library System?
For 2022 it reported 78,750 loans and 92,959 in-person visits.
Library statistics: Alberta public library statistics, 2022. Library locations: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) and Statistics Canada, Open Database of Cultural and Art Facilities (2020). Charities: Canada Revenue Agency, List of charities (2024), charitable organizations only.
Adapted from Statistics Canada (Census of Population 2021, population estimates 2025, 2021 census boundaries) under the Statistics Canada Open Licence; this does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada. Neighbourhood names in some cities © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).