The local demand for library services continues to grow. The number of registered patrons has grown from 117,923 on December 31, 2006 to 123,508 on December 31, 2007. 704,735 items were checked out in 2006 compared to 723,611 in 2007. Use of our website has increased from 18,179,383 hits in 2006 to 26,350,820 hits in 2007.
With a change in administration in 2002, we sought to remedy several key issues affecting our level of service, namely: lack of alternate forms of access, isolation from the wider community of service organizations and corporations, increasing demand for audiovisual products, website and Internet functionality. In 2007, we obtained a State grant for service to homebound patrons and are working through concerns from service providers about responsibility for materials.
The Kiwanis of Chattanooga began contributing a new book to the Library each week as a parting gift in honor of each speaker. We obtained a grant for a pilot program with Read Chattanooga providing GED instruction online for 500 students. The Gates Foundation awarded us a grant for new public computers in our main library and two branches. Our cooperation with Project Ready for School and the Community Foundation brought in a $5,000 contribution for us to purchase much-needed summer reading list books. We held our second annual fundraiser and were able to maintain the level of contributions $23,000 beyond our goal.
Recognizing the huge unmet demand for audio and video titles, we dedicated the proceeds from our first fundraiser to new educational media for children. The public response to this choice was amazing. Though our 2006/2007 FY budget for materials was considerably below any other budget we knew of from 1981 forward, the circulation of new materials purchased with money from the fundraiser during the last three months of the fiscal year nearly erased the loss in circulation during the previous nine months. New AV materials largely account for the 2.7% increase in circulation for 2007.
Over the last few years, we have greatly improved the functionality of our website, especially for parents and school age children seeking educational assistance. We highlight a different database each month, use high-end aggregators to enable complex searches of magazine and book databases from a single textbox, and sought out the best online educational products available. The demand for Internet services has exceeded our capacity to deliver them. We found that several home-schooling sites had singled our library out as a top location and we have over 400 paid subscribers ($30 a year) from across the U.S. and in a number of foreign countries. The demand in our buildings is so great that our current Internet pipeline cannot keep up. We are seeking Federal approval to increase our bandwidth tenfold and are now reviewing bids for a new graduated Internet service contract that will enable us to grow beyond that new capacity as needed.