As students head back to school today, columnist Kirby Lindsay takes a look at the summer reading program at the Fremont Library.

Friends of the Seattle Public Library have created a survey they need library patrons, and non-patrons, to complete. You can fill it out here. One question on the incredibly short survey – this column is longer – asks whether libraries are still relevant.

Considering the response of Fremont Library patrons to the 2009 summer reading challenge, the answer appears to be a resounding, “Yes!”

Rekha Kuver, Librarian for Fremont and Green Lake branches of Seattle Public Library (SPL), couldn’t be sure about actual statistics about participants before she left on furlough August 29. When SPL branch libraries reopen Tuesday, September 8, Kuver intends to take a final tally.

Yet, all summer a board, or a “thermometer” as Kuver described it, stood on the front table at Fremont library. At first stickers were placed carefully in slots provided to mark books read, then they were applied outside the lines. Eventually new stickers covered old stickers to denote squares that counted for double. A tentative number – of books read by adults, teens and children – counted 895. Obviously, reading still rules at Fremont.

(In this photo, Library Associate IV, Jon Takemoto, takes a tally of books read by Fremont Library patrons this past summer on the thermometer.)

“We haven’t really done the thermometer before,” Kuver explained. SPL has organized child and teen reading challenges for decades, but only in recent years have they offered an adult challenge. The first year, a partnership with Starbucks Coffee Company granted participants gift cards for every three books they read. Funding has fallen away, and so did prizes. This year, the entire goal, Kuver pointed out, became collective.