COUNTYWIDE LIBRARY SURVEY
Your Name
Your City Newton Town
Please provide your thoughts on the following four questions. Attach additional pages if necessary.
What would be the benefits of a countywide library system to you and the members of your city?
A countywide library, if it included all the libraries now in Cache County, would be of great benefit to our town's people and our surrounding area. Books could then be borrowed from any library in the county. However, a small town such as ours does not have the revenue to support such a plan.
One suggestion could be to use the Bookmobile as a courier service. Most of the libraries in the county now have their collections online and could be accessed via the internet. We are paying for the Bookmobile to go to most of the towns in the county at the present time. With gas prices as they are, and time restraints for parents, the closer a library is to patrons' homes, the better.
Under what conditions would you support a countywide library system?
We would support a county system as long as our library was under local control subject to county standards, and we had a local board with one member on the county board.
As mentioned above, money is our biggest problem. Therefore, to support a county library system, it would have to be affordable as we do not have a large tax base or business revenue.
Two more questions on the other side of this sheet.)
What are your major concerns about a countywide library system?
Control and finances probably have been the biggest concerns whenever this subject has been brought up in the past. We Utah'ns seem to think bigger is better. If you visit other states, you will find small libraries in each small town. Children can ride their bikes to the library and the libraries have their own historic flavor. Small libraries act as a social outlet for the people they serve.
Newton Town Library sponsored activities.
· A library birthday party is held the first week of May: at this party we have a reader’s theater and kick off our summer reading program. (Note we have over 100 children signed up for our
reading program this year.{ 2006})
· Library Preschool closing party the last Thursday in May for our younger children. This program runs from September to May. Not only does this provide a reading program for the 0-5 year olds but is a social gathering for young mothers. In the summer time this same group meets to have picnics in the park and check out
· 300 Emergent literacy brochures were delivered locally and to surrounding towns. This brochure teaches parents how to prepare their children for school by providing six pre reading skills.
· There are three book clubs in Newton; one has been in existence since 1928. This book club gave the library $50 in 1999 and this is what we opened the Library with.
· Closing party for summer reading program in August. Awards for readers who have met there goal and a Watermelon Bust.
· Santa at the library in December. 216 visited Santa in 2006.
· We cooperate with the local schools and provide Accelerated reading books by reading level for our school children.
During the physical year of 2006/2007 we had 5778 children, 3426 adults visit our library. They checked out 10,280 books, we have 7 computers hooked to Comcast that our customers can use and they used this resource 3,655 times. We have filtered wireless network that is available 24/7 . Six Hundred sixty two volunteer hours were donated to help the library. Our major concern is that we can continue to provide this serve to our patrons locally.
What else would you like share with us regarding libraries?
The Newton Town Library serves as an information, reference, and recreational center for the northwest side of Cache Valley. It is the only library on the West side of the Valley. The library is open to everyone, although the library is supported and funded through Newton Town. Library services have been extended to surrounding communities in an attempt to provide additional services.
We would be happy to make the resources of our library available to the county. Our library resources are online and are in a Marc format, which could be merged to a countywide database. The State Library Division is now looking into several free services used by other states to accomplish such a goal. Our website address is http://home.comcast.net/~newtonlib/ you can check our 26,000 collection on this site. We also provide a Blog to keep customers informed and a way to them respond to our programs. The Blog address is http://www.newtontownlibrary.com
We have a book drop at our library that could be used for this side of the valley to deposit books in. The courier could pick them up when he/she makes their rounds. He/she could also bring books ordered from other libraries by people in our area. We could then notify patrons of the delivery.
The Library has a Special Collection that contains many local histories and over 300 school and home photos, many historic. We have a grant to catalog this collection and to put the pictures on line; they can be accessed through our web site.
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