Director's Report 2007
Barbara Rose
Overview Borough residents have always been proud of their
library and supported it with their taxes and attendance. In
April the library celebrated 80 years of incorporation by the borough with a
party featuring the acquisition of the photography collection of Richard
Harpster, which also includes works by Harry Minassian. Mayor Marianne Van Deursen served as emcee, introducing State Senator Leonard
Lance, who gave an interesting speech, and local poet B. J. Ward, who read a
poem he had written especially for the occasion. Music from Galena Brass and authentic 1920’s
refreshments from AngleFood completed the festivities, which were well
attended. The acquisition of the
Harpster Collection was an extremely significant addition to the library’s
local history collection.
Staff: Lynn Moore celebrated her 19th
year with us on August 8. Unfortunately,
the day before the April celebration, Cindy Trimmer fell and broke her ankle
badly. She did not return to work until
August 24, which left a hole in the summer staffing. Fortunately, Krista White, a resident who is
currently working on her Master’s Degree in Library Science at
Building: 2007 has seen a decrease in unpleasant
incidents, thanks to the digital security camera system installed last
November. Additionally, barberry bushes
have been planted near the north side of the building to discourage youths from
climbing onto the roof when the library is closed. The
small air conditioner made it through the summer, but the repairmen refuse to
attempt to repair it again, due to its age.
Money to replace it was passed in the 2007 capital budget, but we will
wait until spring 2008 to replace it (it is on the roof.)
Library Use: The DVD and CD collections
continue to grow but the videocassette and audiotape collections remain
popular. Book circulation is slightly
down overall, but use of the nonfiction collection by both children and adults
has increased this year. This is
consistent with national trends that show less recreational reading of
books. New means of communication
without PCs also seem to have affected use of our Internet machines for
email. This may be tied to the fact that
although attendance is about the same as last year, fewer children/youth are
coming in after school, possibly thanks to the extended programs at all local
schools, to the blocking of games and MySpace.com or to the security cameras,
which discourage afternoon mischief. On
a less positive note, the presence on the street corner of a dozen or so teens
who habitually interfere with traffic and other people has also discouraged
some attendance.
Because our
holdings are now available to everyone online via JerseyCat, the statewide
database, patrons are able to tell what we own from home. Our requests to borrow from other libraries
are down, but loans to other libraries have significantly increased, though we
are still a net borrower. Either way,
Programs: The 2007 calendar contained the 80th
anniversary celebration, the children’s story hour, the summer reading program
“Get a Clue @ your Library” and regularly scheduled computer clinics for
adults. This tax season also saw the
return of the volunteer tax preparers to the library, and for their July
meeting, the Washington Historical Society invited a speaker on the Civil
War. The program was open to the public
and well attended. Other programs for
the community included crafts and job fairs.
In 2007 we held a total of 120 programs, attended by 1,942 people. The
Washington Historical Society continues meeting monthly, for 11 meetings (the
Christmas meeting is held in a private home).
Children’s programming included a Kiwanis-sponsored
celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday on March 2, which was a culmination of the
“Read around the World” passport program that began in February; the preschool
story time that runs during the school year and the annual summer reading
program. The First Book Program
continues to make available new or nearly new books for free distribution to
young children to encourage lifelong literacy.
This summer we were represented at the Festival in the Borough and PNC
Community Day, donating nearly 1,000 gently used books to both children and
adults. Then, in cooperation with the Borough elementary schools we were able
to enter local winners in the national “Little Toot” contest, celebrating the
100th birthday of the author.
The
2007 Summer Reading Program theme for elementary children was “Get a Clue @
your Library”. 61 children signed up,
with a total attendance for the four programs of 188. More than 440 books were reported read this
year, with children reporting a total of 483 hours of reading time. Although
registration was down this year, minutes read dramatically increased. Apparently, children chose to read longer
books than several shorter titles. Once
again, the children read for points, and received a total of 28,950 Book Bucks
paper “money” to purchase prizes in the library “store”. The programs ran on Thursdays in July. In addition, children who could not attend
the programs but wanted to read for the rewards were allowed to do so. They were also able to amass points
throughout the entire summer.
The
teen theme for the Summer Reading Program was “YNK” or You Never Know @ your
Library. Krista White worked hard with
this little group, which met on the five Tuesday evenings in July, but
attendance peaked at 5.
In 2007
Computers: Our new domain name is washboropl.org, and in
July the old email server was taken down, so that the staff now has email
provided directly by the state library using our name, e.g. brose@washboropl.org. The library had been using the same server
since October 2000, and it was beginning to show its age, so a new one was
ordered for installation on January 21,2008 Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday
(the library was closed), because the entire computer network had to be down
most of the day.
The microfilm of the Washington
Star from 1868-1923 were digitized in 2005, but the quality of the original
film was so poor that the indexing is not reliable. Nonetheless, the digitized version from that
period is now available on all of the library’s Internet machines, permitting
more flexibility with searching, printing and formatting than the microfilm
machine itself can offer.
2008 Vision:
Collection development is a continuing concern, along with building
maintenance and policy reviews. The DVD
and CD collections continue to grow disproportionately to the rest of the
collection, following their usage statistics.
Now that we have 7 years of circulation statistics in the current online
catalog, we are also beginning to weed items that are not being used to make
space for newer books. Some of the
weeded books were sent to Better World
Books, an organization that either sells them or redistributes them to
charities throughout the world. They
provided the boxes, shipping and handling.
Efforts to
cooperate with local schools and other groups will continue in order to promote
the well being of our children. Another
continuing service is the coalition with First Book that provides new and
gently used books for children to be distributed at borough festivals and at
the library for special events.