COURT HOUSE – For about the price of a hardcover edition of John Grisham’s “Sycamore Row,” patrons of Cape May County Library System have a world of information available in a variety of media.
Freeholders approved the 2014 County Library Tax at their Jan. 14 meeting. It remains .00029 mil of a dollar, or $29 per $100,000 of assessed value, the same as in 2013. Fourteen of the county’s municipalities participate; Avalon and Ocean City operate municipal libraries and thus do not impose the county library tax.
The five-member County Library Commission, chaired by Lawrence Allen, passed its 2014 budget of $12.5 million Jan. 15.
Thus the bookmobile will continue to roll into places like Martin Luther King Community Center, Whitesboro, Coast Guard Day Care Center, Cape May, Cape Christian Academy, Cape May Point, Dennisville and North Wildwood.
Technologically-challenged persons will continue to be able to learn the fine points of operating tablets, smartphones and similar data-related instruments in the Technology Learning Center by patient instructors.
Children will cluster on the floor for story time at the Cape May Branch. Teens will hang out and play Dungeons and Dragons in the Teen Zone, and perhaps map a new world using Minecraft. Those with “tired eyes” will find expanded collections of large-print books. Magazine devotees will flip through an assortment of glossy publications.
Key to the information universe is a simple library card. Those cards are available to county residents as well as visitors, and are valid for one year.
Overseeing the seven-branch operation is Library Director Deborah Poillon, in her seventh year. From her office in the Main Branch on Mechanic Street, she superintends those branches. Busiest of those, she said in a Jan. 16 interview, are the main and Lower Township branches. Other branches are located in Upper Township, Cape May, Sea Isle City, Stone Harbor, Wildwood Crest and Woodbine.
In Wildwood Crest and Stone Harbor new branches are planned. The one in Wildwood Crest should be ready for bids Jan. 29, and construction at the former Masonic lodge on Atlantic Avenue is expected to take just over a year. Plans are still being worked on for the Stone Harbor branch.
“Others depend on the season,” she said. “Upper Township, year-round is the third busiest.”
Summer visitors swell patron visits in Cape May, Wildwood Crest and Sea Isle City, she said.
All branches are Wi-Fi enabled, and no password is needed, thus even those who do not enter the physical building may access the Internet with their devices from the curb or parking lots. Among the top users of that Wi-Fi service are foreign workers in shops, restaurants and amusement piers.
The commission’s budget is largely driven by personnel expenses, Poillon said. There are about 70 year-round employees and about 20 seasonal (summer) workers.
The digital revolution may be changing the way many patrons utilize the library, accessing e-books from their Wi-Fi devices, they borrowed 30,051 e-books last year, those who love to hold books and physically flip pages borrow 624,771 books, systemwide, Poillon said.
According to Poillon’s statistics 199,039 of those books were loaned from the main branch, 117,951 from Lower Township. There were 8,149 loans of audio items, CDs and there were 601,774 visits to the branches.
A variety of programs, too, attracted patrons of all ages, from Lego Clubs, when youngsters construct buildings, boats, spaceships and more, to adult programs of exercise and cooking to popular author visits, two of which were held in the newest branch at Sea Isle City. The tally of adults who participated in programs was 22,676, teens, 2,525 (they are fascinated by Dungeons and Dragons, said Poillon), and 18,685 children attended. Thus, 46,650 attended the programs last year, Poillon said.
For those with privacy concerns, Poillon noted the library does not keep a record of books read or borrowed by patrons. However, should they wish to keep their own list on their account, they may do so using their own bookshelf.
Whether or not it’s a sign of the digital times, Poillon noted that book circulation in 2013 was down, perhaps 1 percent over the previous year. “This is the first year it dipped. Forever it stayed the same, and has been going up,” said Poillon.
“Part of that is because e-books are popular but they have not quite tipped the scale,” she said.
“When e-books came out, I knew they would eventually be popular. I said, ‘I don’t think I will ever use a machine to read a book,” she said. Now the owner of a tablet, she finds herself reading that way, due in part to the ease of enlarging type and changing background lighting schemes. Statistics show she is one of many others who are accessing the library from easy chairs at home.
“Our e-book budget is going up $20,000 for the last three years,” Poillon said.
The county library uses Overdrive to loan its e-books, she said. “We purchase licenses to loan the e-books, we do not purchase the e-book itself,” she said. That is why loans are limited to seven or 14 days, a reader’s choice.
While many homes are Internet connected, Poillon said that use of Internet computers at all library branches has increased.
“We kept thinking that (number) would settle down, but a lot of people cannot afford the Internet,” Poillon said. Use declined, but when the economy “went south, use greatly expanded,” she noted.
Concerns, once the focus of a petition drive to prevent the main branch would relocate to the vicinity of the County Park Zoo’s African Savannah, have ended, Poillon. “We will be here for the next 40 years,” she said of the Mechanic Street structure.
The building, however, is slated for a major renovation. At present, crumbling front steps are chained off forcing patrons to use front ramps. Two-story-high columns by the front entrance are rotting. The roof leaks terribly, and space needs to be reallocated. All those will be remedied by the refurbishing.
That will result in changes, said Poillon, but for the better, she noted.
The Teen Zone, a room set aside for teenaged patrons, will move to the second floor. The Technology Learning Center will expand to include an audio-video lab for patrons to record songs and digitize VHS videotapes and old photos to digital means.
The magazine reading room will head upstairs. And, there is a 3-D printer that, Poillon noted, “Is sort of fun.” In time, the practicality of that printer will become more evident as patrons learn how and why to use it, she said.
Who would think of placing sewing machines in a library? Poillon, for one. “Libraries have always been for most who cannot afford every book. But we are looking at other things.” To be sure, she said, those machines won’t be yesterday’s foot-powered Singer models, but modern sewing machines capable of many functions.
But then, how far different are the sewing machines from the well-attended cooking classes presented at the library?
Databases are responsible for taking about $200,000 from the budget, Poillon said. While the Internet may offer myriad answers to as many questions, reliable information can readily be found on one of those databases accessibly at the library or anywhere via Internet. They give valid information for any question from learning a new language (Mango) to repairing small engines, how to fix an outboard motor or how to price antiques, Poillon said.
As proof the library offers something for everyone, Poillon said “We even teach bridge, because some still like to play it.”
Sea Isle City – I would like to let everyone know that the fire chief salary also includes 4% raises in the next four years, while they offered public works and everybody else much less.
