Tewksbury Library Beats Wilmington Library In Minute Madness Semifinal

TEWKSBURY AND WILMINGTON, MA — Tewksbury Public Library reached the final of the Minute Madness reading competition this week by defeating rival Wilmington Memorial Library in the semifinal round.

The second annual Minute Madness event featured 21 libraries from around Massachusetts competing in a monthlong bracket-style reading tournament. Each head-to-head matchup was decided by which library's patrons logged the most reading minutes.

In the weeklong, head-to-head matchup between Tewksbury Public Library and Wilmington Memorial Library that ended Tuesday, Tewksbury patrons logged 172,049 minutes while Wilmington patrons logged 110,781 minutes.

Tewksbury, which is competing in Minute Madness for the first time, has moved on to face Burlington Public Library in the final round, which began Wednesday and lasts until April 5. Burlington defeated the Georgetown Peabody Library in the other semifinal.

"(This week) is the end game," Nicole Goolishian, assistant director of the Tewksbury Public Library, told Patch. "We are eager to see how it ends. We thank our patrons and remind them to log their minutes. The competition was new to us and we are excited that it has been so successful."

According to Goolishian, Tewksbury patrons have logged over 500,000 reading minutes over the last four weeks. Goolishian said 300 readers have participated thus far, though the library said on social media that it's never too late to join the team.

All types of reading and listening materials count toward the competition, including: books, audiobooks, graphic novels, magazines and newspapers.

Patrons can sign up for the Minute Madness reading competition on Beanstack. Though patrons who have signed up for Beanstack previously can use their existing account to enter the competition. Paper logs are available at the library's service desk or can be printed online.

Wilmington Memorial Library reached the final of the 2022 Minute Madness competition, where it lost to Georgetown Peabody Library.

Though Wilmington ended up losing to its rivals from Tewksbury this year, Wilmington library staff said the library's patrons should be proud of how much reading time they logged.

"It was a tight race to the championship round between Tewksbury and us, but ultimately Tewksbury took the lead," Wilmington Memorial Library staff said in a statement on social media. "While we may not have advanced to the next round, we still read over 300,000 minutes, which is a huge accomplishment! Congratulations to Tewksbury for moving on to the championship."

This was the second straight reading victory by Tewksbury Public Library over Wilmington Memorial Library. In the second annual Reading Rivals challenge between the libraries this past fall, Tewksbury logged 1,614,802 minutes to Wilmington's 1,338,218 minutes over the course of nearly two months.

Wilmington did defeat Tewksbury in the inaugural Reading Rivals challenge in 2021.