Library A Week

Cissna Park Community Library District

2010 no. 8

Library Profile

Library Name: Cissna Park Community Library District Location: 511 N. Second Street, Cissna Park, IL 60924 Type: Public/School Mission: Our primary mission is to support the curriculum. Our secondary mission is to provide educational, entertainment, and recreational materials to the community. LTLS Directory Page: http://www.lincolntrail.info/ysn.html LTLS Member Since: 1981   An interview with Librarian, Richard Dulaney.

What is unique about your library?

We are a combined school/public library. We were the pilot site for LTLS as a model combined school and public library. The public library contracts with the school district for space; the school and public cooperate as part of the LTLS online catalog system. We also have a large collection of inspirational fiction.

What are the primary goals and objectives of your library?

My main goal is to keep meeting the needs of our patrons in this age of disappearing funds. We try to provide whatever is asked of us, the best we can. Going along with our mission, curriculum support is important and so is providing educational, entertainment and recreational materials for our community.

What cooperative efforts are you currently doing?

Working with the school is the main cooperative effort. Everyday, I am reminded of that as students go through the library to get to classes. Our library sends out about 3,000 items and receives about the same number through LTLS interlibrary loan. It makes me happy to know that we lend out as much as we use, and that we don’t just see materials coming into our library.

Tell us a story about your library.

Our school board travels around the area for meetings at different schools. They always come back impressed with how much our library has to offer compared to the high school libraries they usually meet in. Most school libraries are funded from the education fund and are often one of the first cuts when budgets get tight, but in our case, most of our money comes from local library taxes so we are somewhat insulated from the current state funding crisis. Sandy Thomas conducts story hours for the library. She has over 50 children a week on three different days. Not only is there a story, but a craft, playtime and a homemade snack. The ages range from 2 and a half to Kindergarten. This story time has helped prepare many Kindergartners be not be afraid to begin school. They are now familiar with the library and Mrs. Thomas and it helps ease the transition.

If money were no object, what services would you add?

I would throw away my non-fiction collection and start completely over. It’s hard to keep up with changes and have the most up to date collection. It would be nice to have the non-fiction and reference collection have more current information. I would love to have a better internet connection with more bandwidth. I would also pay my staff more.

What is popular in your library?

We have a large group of fiction readers, and an even larger group of inspirational fiction readers. This has kept our inspirational collection current and has been very popular. DVDs and movies used to be more popular, but with services such as Netflix we are seeing a decline in circulation.

How does your library use online tools to connect to your users?

We aren’t currently using any online tools.

Request a visit to your library If you would like to set up a special date for us to visit your library contact LTLS Consultant Michelle Ralston Library of the Week is published by Lincoln Trail Libraries System, 1704 W. Interstate Dr., Champaign, IL 61822 217-352-0047  -   ltls@lincolntrail.info Executive Director: Jan Ison, Editorial and Design Team: Michelle Ralston and David Lottes