Augusta Township Public Library Annual Report 2007

Highlights:

Donations were used to purchase a 2^nd new easy chair for the children’s area. This seating area has proven very popular with both young and adult readers.

The library hosted the Forest of Reading Program “Blue Spruce” This program is organized through the Ontario Library Association for children from Kindergarten to Grade 3. The librarian reads a Blue Spruce book to students during their classroom visits. Extra copies of the Blue Spruce titles are available for children to read independently. The children then vote on their favourite title. 51 students took part in the program, with 23 students qualifying to vote for their favourite book.

Bedtime storytime continued on the 4^th Thursday of each month except for July, August, and December. This program features ‘Paws to Read’ dogs. Attendance for this program has decreased in 2007.

Angie Knights and Linda Parrott successfully completed an Excel course in Electronic Information Resources

Angie Knights attended the “Recipe for Literacy” conference presented by the Early Years Centre in Brockville. Augusta Township Public Library provided a display on our ‘Paws to Read’ program, and Angie attended sessions on the ‘Every Child Ready to Read’ program, Family Math and Book Kits.

Angie Knights attended SOLs workshops on Pay Equity Maintenance, E-Reference, and Children’s Collection Development.

The Provincial Special Literacy Grant was used to purchase new shelving to provide more room for the Adult Collection and to relocate the reference collection. The Young Adult collection has been moved to our new Young Adult Reading Area in the Trillium Reading and reference room. This change has been very popular with our Young Adult readers, and makes our Reference Collection more visible.

Augusta Township Public Library joined the Southern Ontario DVD Pool which provides approximately 60 DVD titles every 8 weeks. This has been extremely popular with our patrons.

The library registered for the new Knowledge Ontario initiative which gives our patrons access to a selection of Thompson Gale and Ebsco databases, providing information on current events, primary source historical records, and many other resources.

The library hours were changed as of March 1^st to eliminate Friday opening. The Board recognized that, given current staff levels, continuing to open 6 days a week was not feasible.

The entire collection was ‘weeded’ to eliminate outdated, damaged and non-circulating items.

In July an inventory of the collection was completed by staff, with the assistance of Greg Morrison and Gary Thornhill. The final total of missing items was 249.

In October an inventory of the library contents, excluding books, was completed by library volunteers. This inventory will be updated regularly, and will be very useful in evaluating our insurance coverage. The inventory of library holdings including the collection and other contents anticipates the requirements of the Provincial Government under the Municipal Act.

The library hosted a reading program for children 12 and under starting in September. The theme of the program was “Lost Worlds” using materials supplied by OLA and the TD bank. Children who registered for the program and read 10 books by December 15th were permitted to choose a free book from the treasure chest. 36 children registered for the program with 4 reading the required 10 books. A total of 83 books were read during the program.

On October 17^th the library inaugurated the ‘Pillars of Strength’ award at our annual Volunteer Appreciation reception. Recipients of the ‘Pillars of Strength’ certificate have been library volunteers for at least 5 years, and many have volunteered for 10 or more. These recipients will have their names included on special plaques in the library. The library intends to make this award an annual feature of our volunteer appreciation program.

Flat screen monitors have now been installed on all library computers except the kiosk computer, which is used only for the library catalogue.

Our Technology committee installed a “wireless hot spot” in the library which will enable users to connect to our wireless service with their laptops while in the library. The library also received the donation of a laptop which can be used by patrons or staff as required.

The library received a Provincial Literacy Grant in the amount of $9000.00 This grant can be ‘used to help strengthen literacy and promote lifelong learning’. The board chose to allocate a portion to development of specific areas of the collection, and some capital expenditures such as furniture and shelving. There was no time limit specified by the Provincial government for spending this grant.

The Thousand Islanders Brockville Branch of the Ontario Hooking Craft Guild donated $1218.00 to the library. This represented the proceeds from a raffle of a hand hooked rug.

The Friendly Gardeners donated $100.00 to the library in addition to many hours of work maintaining the library gardens.

Circulation: Total 21,972 (Library was open 1320 hours or 252

Days)

Membership: Total: 1795

103 New members

Material Available:

23696 books: 11368 juvenile, 12095 adult, 233 reference
29 periodical subscriptions
293 talking books and read-along kits
188 videos and dvds plus 550 titles per year from the Video Pool
local history collection
six computers for patron use – all with internet access, one with voice recognition software.
three printers, one colour
Copier, scanner, fax machine
Telephone directories for Ottawa, Kingston, Cornwall, Brockville and the Laurentians

New Additions:

Programs:

Blue Spruce reading program – Kindergarten to grade 3 – 51 registered.
Lost Worlds reading program – 12 years and under – 36 registered – 4 completed the program.
Bedtime storytime/Paws to Read – averaging 4 children per evening.

Miscellaneous Funds Collected:

Miscellaneous:

Civic Address: 4500 County Road 15 Algonquin, Ontario. Telephone: (613) 926-2449 Fax: (613) 926-0440

Mailing address: R.R.# 2 Brockville, Ontario K6V 5T2