Pratt Library’s book checkouts are at a 12-year high. What was Baltimore reading?

If you read a book about Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, you might learn about the emergence of ebooks and disruptions during the beginning of the pandemic. But there’s one plot twist you might not see coming — book checkouts are way up. The library system set a 12-year high with 1.9 million first-time borrows, the equivalent of about 3.4 per resident, based on census estimates. The count reflects all checkouts of physical books, excluding renewals.