1. “One service I’ve heard of other libraries offering that I’d love to see in Cheshire is “library elf”, where one can sign up to get e-mail reminders that books will be due soon. I am always forgetting when my library books are due–I could really use the e-mail reminders!”
We do currently offer email notification of “almost-due” items — simply give a staff member your email address at your next library visit and you’ll begin receiving emails a few days before your items are due. You can also check your due dates, renew, and reserve materials through our website at www.cheshirelibrary.org.
2. “Need more copies of new releases.”
We’ve been working very hard to re-allocate funds to allow us to purchase more copies of bestsellers. We currently strive for a 6-to-1 holds-per-copy ratio, which would ideally mean that there are never more than 5 people ahead of you in line for a book. Even better would be a 4-to-1 ratio, or even a 2-to-1 ratio (which very progressive public libraries aim for). Each year, I mention this to the Town Council at budget time! We did receive a 6.1% increase in our materials budget for Fiscal Year 2008-2009, but of course inflation will eat up a lot of our purchasing power. In the meantime, we do receive weekly reports of high-demand items that have long reserve lists, and we use those reports to determine how many extra copies of titles to purchase or lease, in order to ease the demand.
Of course, we are always happy to take donations of new copies of bestsellers, or of funds to help purchase extra copies (checks can be made payable to “Cheshire Library Gift Account”).
3. “Many books in the more technical areas are very dated.”
Thank you for letting us know — we’ll work to correct that.
4. “We need to have Saturday and Sunday hours all year long.”
We’d love to be open 24/7, but alas, it’s a budgetary issue. We are fortunate that the Town Council did not cut our funding for 12 Sundays (January - March) in 2009, despite it being a very tight budget year. By contract, bargaining unit staff are not required to work Saturdays in July and August; therefore it would again become a budgetary issue to open the library on summer Saturdays, since it would have to be staffed with part-timers (or bargaining unit members on overtime). If and when the economy improves, perhaps we could work towards expanding our hours again (remember that until recently, the library opened at 10:00 a.m. instead of 9:30 a.m., and was not open any Sundays). Remember to mention this to your Town Council representatives!
5. “I wish the DVD movies were organized in a different way. It is hard to find new movies. I am too short to check the upper shelves.”
We’ve heard this from lots of people — and we’re working to make it easier to access our DVDs. We’ve installed browseable cases in the lobby, which allow you to flip through our new DVDs like the pages of a book, and we’ve made an effort to display only one DVD face-out on the upper shelves (so you don’t have to flip through cases over your head).
Do you know about all the newspapers, magazines, and other research materials available at your fingertips? Your Connecticut library card is your key to articles from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, Christian Science Monitor, and the AP Photo Archive. You can find articles from journals and magazines on science, health, history, biographies, and business. You can find your physician’s profile, the history of your town, and the demographics of a town where you’re thinking of setting up a business. You can find books and other materials at public libraries across Connecticut, as well as at academic libraries like Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity, and Connecticut College. And best of all, you can search all of these resources with just one click, because they’re all included in iCONN, Connecticut’s research engine.