Kiwanis continues to support new library

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Scott Pettigrew

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Tweed Kiwanis continues to follow through on a five-year $15,000 commitment to the Tweed Library. Seen here presenting a cheque for $3,000 are, in the front row Treasurer Jim Roulston, Librarian Cathy Anderson, Library Chair Al McNeil. In the back are Kiwanis members David Cronhielm, President Wayne Kay, Lieutenant Governor Elect Bob Giguere, Past President Fred Albert and Kiwanis member Don DeGenova.

EMC News -Tweed - On Tuesday, January 24, the Tweed Kiwanis made their second of five annual $3,000 donations to the Tweed Library. "That was part of our $15,000 commitment to the library during its construction stage in 2010," said Kiwanis member Jim Roulston. "Our funding is to go toward the cost of children's programs the library provides."

Jim added the funding of this $3,000 donation comes from part of the proceeds provided by the recent sale of Kiwanis community lottery tickets.

Head Librarian Cathy Anderson was kind enough to take time out of a very busy schedule and sit down with the EMC to provide an update of what has been going on at the Tweed Library. The library has decided to continue IT technician Brian Heenan's contract for one more year. "Brian was on a grant for the last two years. He looked after six libraries, the project had 15 libraries in total with four IT people and that ended at the end of December along with the funding. We decided to continue because we did not want to lose the momentum he had created, he set up all our computers when we moved and he did the design. Brian also maintains and updates our web site and he helps manage our electronic resources which are mandated by the province because people have to be able to access them from home and of course these must also run smoothly. People now have e-readers and iPods and Brian knows how all these new technologies function."

At that point Cathy showed a closet where the main server computer is housed that controls all of the computers at the library and it is definitely very impressive.

"The setup was all his design and he knows it well. We serve the public with ten public access computers as well as wireless and all of those things have to be working. I am a librarian with a certificate in small library management, which means doing paper work and supervising people and making sure everything runs smoothly, but I do not have any certificates in computer technology although I work on a computer all day."

Cathy went on to say the library has some reserve funds and with the community access program the money to extend Brian's contract will come from there. Brian will be at the library two days each month.

"Brian does help people on the computer but we also have a youth intern, both the community access program and the youth intern funding comes from Industry Canada and the funding ends when their budget ends March 31 so we do not find out if the funding will continue until late summer."

Hazel Barber is the youth intern and she works three days each week, Wednesday night, Friday afternoon and Saturdays. She works one-on-one with people for one hour and helps them learn computer skills among other things. She will occasionally do group tutorials when there is enough interest. She has sign-up sheet posted every two weeks and her schedule is very busy.

The library has also now hired a new part time Library Clerk Program Developer in Amy McDonald and she will be developing programming. "The programs were put on hold for a short time with Josie Fitzgerald resigning and now, with Amy starting this week, things should be up and going very quickly because she also works at the Deseronto Library and will bring some of the programs for young and old that she is familiar with to our library."

The new library has grown quickly and has gone from a circulation of 20,650 in 2010 to 27,000 in 2011. Computer usage has more than doubled and the library web site had 632 e-drive downloads on-line. "We don't even see these people who download at home, we only have this information by checking the statistics on-line."

The library had 3,400 patrons in 2011 from approximately 2,800 in 2010. "We have signed up a phenomenal amount of new people, in fact I just signed up six new people first thing this morning. It is really great to see so many people taking advantage of the new library. I did 207 transactions in one day a few Fridays ago, at the old library a normal day would be about 80. We have guidelines that tell us how many transactions require more than one person which is 13 per hour and 207 in a seven-hour day is an indication of how busy we have been."

Cathy said the Friends of the Library have received a grant from the Canada Arts Council and will be launching a series of authors coming to Tweed. The first will be Terry Fallis who is the Canada Reads winner from last year with his book Best Laid Plans and he will be coming in April. In total there will be six authors coming in the series.