The Alicia Ashman Branch Library, a publicly funded and managed library and an affiliate library of the Madison Public Library (MPL), serves almost 270,000 residents in Madison, the capital city of Wisconsin, which lies west of Milwaukee. The Alicia Ashman Branch contributes to the overall collection and services of MPL, which maintains almost 800,000 volumes and circulates almost four million items per year. Founded in 1875, MPL grew with the tradition of promoting education, literacy, and community involvement to make Madison City what it is now. Today, Alicia Ashman is only one of the eight branches, plus the central library – MPL, plus the Dream Bus, with a total aggregated visits of more than 2.1 million and more than 163,000 registered borrowers.