Free Association pt. 2

A little while back, we posted an article about the library's decision to be Free Association rather than School District or Town Supported. I recently came across more evidence from a Board meeting about 20 years after the library was formed, in which they reconsidered this question. Here is part of the discussion from the September 20, 1983 meeting:

"Mrs. Schmuckler presented some thought provoking ideas for the future of the Library.

"1. Where the money is coming from
"2. Leadership and people to move us along to get the money
"3. Becoming a School District Library
"4. Expanding the Board to 14-16 people
"5. Look for people who have different connections
"6. Additional members to come from other organizations or groups to reach more people
"8. To form a committee to investigate procedures to become a School District Library
"Reopen and investigate our School District Budget"

These are some of the ongoing problems the Board was facing in the eighties, as many of the Board reports mention that money and materials were tight, and members of the organization worried about how to make the library more secure and investigate areas to obtain more funding. I didn't find anything else in the reports for that year, and the library has remained a Free Association library, but in the next post, I will explore further how money was secured in Prop #2 on the J-D ballot.

Beware: spooky substance!

Since we're approaching Halloween, I thought I'd do a fun post about a very mysterious circumstance that occurred in the mid-eighties. It was only talked about in two consecutive board meetings, and then never brought up again. Spooky!

May 17, 1983 --

"A week ago Friday, TJ's sent a black sulphurous substance to the library offices via a drain pipe that was being cleaned by Cross-Kinney Plumbing. The plumber stated this was an unsanitary condition. The county health department has a second report on record against TJ's."

June 21, 1983 --

"Continued problems with TJ's. The black 'sulphurous' substance continues to back up into the Library offices. Mr. Jack Orr of the Health Department has been notified for the third time, as yet no assistance."

No further mention was made of the mysterious substance, nor what TJ's was doing sending it via the drain pipe, but one thing is certain: precisely 23 and a half years later, the library moved to a completely different location in the mall. Coincidence? You decide.

Collection Development

Over the years, our collection at the DeWitt Community Library has certainly grown and changed, as have the needs of our patrons. From the date we opened our doors in 1962 until probably the mid-eighties, the focus of libraries was on research and reference services, as well as bestselling titles and newspapers. We had a collection of vinyl albums, newspaper archives on microfilm, and quite an extensive Reference collection. Your Librarian was the gateway to information if you had to write a report, research current events in the newspaper, make a family tree, or you wanted the latest book by your favorite author. The Reference Desk was most likely your first stop as you entered the library.

Things have certainly changed over the decades, and especially in the last 15 years, as the world has become much more fast-paced and technology oriented. Instead of vinyl, we have a CD collection -- but we have gone beyond that, as well. We now circulate DVDs and Blu-Rays, video games, and the library offers downloadable audiobooks that you can save on your iPod or MP3 player. As the world becomes more virtual, we still offer newspaper archives but now it's through a database subscription, along with genealogy research databases and encyclopedias for children and adults. The addition of so many online subscription materials has allowed us to order fewer costly Reference books in print, which also frees up shelf space for expanding our collection in more popular areas. Another big difference in the past couple years is that we are moving beyond strict Dewey Decimal order in our Adult Non-Fiction stacks; we now shelve our books by category first and then by Dewey number, making our shelving system much more browsing-friendly, like it is at your local bookstore. Your Librarian is still a helpful reference and a good starting point, but you can also help yourself more easily when you come into the library, or when you check out our website from home.

Click on the pictures below for full-size versions.

Deliver me from OCPL

As you may or may not know, the Skaneateles Library has very recently become an official member of the Onondaga County Public Library System! They are applying for their charter to become an official New York State Public Library, and in preparation for that application process, they negotiated with OCPL to become a member of our organization. This means they make the 32nd library to join our county-wide system.

Lately, the DeWitt Community Library has become the second busiest library in the county, and you can see evidence of this just by looking at how much we receive and send in our daily library delivery. Have you ever placed a reserve on an item and wondered just exactly how that item makes its way from its home library into your hands? Well, every morning libraries print out a daily holds list that tells us titles and shelf locations for items that have been placed on hold by patrons all over the county. We go to the shelves and pull these items, then check them in and print out a slip that lets us know where to send them. We sort the items into various bins and bags based on their ultimate destination. Then all items are picked up by a delivery van which carries them to Central Library to be sorted. Once the items are sorted and tagged for individual libraries, they are picked up by that same delivery van and carried to their respective libraries. This is the reason why items can sometimes take a week or more between "Shipped" status and "Held" status, so be patient! These days, we are working overtime to fulfill all your wildest book dreams!

As you can see from the photos below, our delivery has definitely increased. The first picture is of a delivery man bringing us a few bags back in the 1980s. Fast forward to 2009, and you will see that the amount of delivery we receive and put out takes the delivery van driver two or three trips to complete on average! There are also photos of the very first delivery slip we printed for Skaneateles Library. So now you know the story of the OCPL delivery system.

Click on the photos for full-size versions.

Dear Volunteers

April was National Volunteer Month, but I just woke up from hibernation, so this post is a few weeks late!

The DeWitt Community Library has a history of working with volunteers that goes back long before our official grand opening in 1962. Men and women who felt passionate about the need for a library in DeWitt spent two decades researching, organizing, and finally unveiling the DeWitt Community Library Association and library space. Our Board of Trustees is, of course, a volunteer organization, as is our Friends group; volunteers from the community and the Boy and Girl Scouts helped put books on the shelves in 1962, and later helped move the library a couple times; and to this day, we employ a strong and dedicated corps of volunteers that help us with shelving and various other library tasks.

In one of the first Board meeting reports in 1962, the Volunteers' Committee noted that:

"Well over 1,000 hours have been given by women of the community, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and high school groups during the period of October, 1961 - May 31, 1962.

"From October through March, volunteers collected books on a Book Drive and assisted in sorting, stamping, typing, pasting, and generally preparing books for shelves.

"Since opening day, April 9, 1962, volunteers have assisted the librarian by opening the library week-day afternoons and Saturday mornings; handling charge-outs, book returns, issuance of borrowers' cards, and, whenever possible, continuing preparation of new books for shelves.

"At present time, 38 women, working in teams of two, are active volunteers. The Board of Trustees is deeply grateful for the deep loyalty, personal responsibility, and untiring efforts of each one of them."

For several years, Jean Hutton was the Volunteer Committee chairperson, and oversaw "Our excellent group of volunteers, or Library Guild, as it is called." Jean herself continued to volunteer her time to the DeWitt Library well into the 1990s. As she points out in her 1963 Committee Report, "[Volunteers] have made the DeWitt Library possible!" By 1967, Director Kay Kinney was praising the efforts of 3 groups of volunteers: Boy Scouts, who shelved and moved books; Girl Scouts, who helped with story hours and taking books to New York State Manor; and adult volunteers, who worked at the desk and also helped promote the library through outreach projects.

The Librarian's Report for 1972 is particularly full of praise for the volunteers: "At least 120 people were involved as volunteers in the project [to move the library]." As you may have noticed, the only thing the DCL is fonder of than good volunteers is packing up and moving!

In recent years, we have had the help of many teenagers from the Jamesville-DeWitt school district who need to complete community service as a graduation requirement. In addition, in the last year we have begun to rebuild our volunteer corps with almost 20 adults who applied with us and have given many hours of their time to shelving, shelf reading, and organizing your DeWitt Community Library.

Please click on the images below to see excerpts of Volunteer Committee Reports.

Be a part of history!

Do you enjoy our Archives Blog? Wish you could contribute to our collection and knowledge of DCL or DeWitt history? Now's your chance! Share your history with us this spring. The DeWitt Community Library, in partnership with the DeWitt Preservation & Historical Society and the Cultural Resources Council, is hosting an Oral History Project!

In addition, the library is seeking photographs and memorabilia related to our town's history. Participants of this project are encouraged to "jog" their memories by looking at these artifacts, and have their memories recorded for inclusion in our archives.

If you've got memorabilia to donate or photograph, or pictures you will allow us to copy for our files, please bring them in to the DeWitt Community Library any time between now and May 9. We will return all originals, unless you would like to donate them. If you have questions, please contact the library at 315-446-3578. You can also view the details and sign up to participate in the oral history by clicking here.

The Association Must Be Free

You may know that the DeWitt Community Library is a Free Association Library, but perhaps you don't know just what that means or how it was established. The DCL opened officially in April 1962, but discussions about the need for a library in DeWitt began almost two decades before that date. There was a DeWitt Community Association well established, which was a non-profit organization serving the town in various volunteer capacities; this Community Association had a separate library committee, and in the early sixties Jack Robertson -- Chair of the Library Committee -- and this group spent time gathering information from the community and gauging the level of enthusiasm for a public library.

Once they were decided on having a library, the committee then had to determine what type of library would best suit the DeWitt area. There were three possible types of we could become: 1. Town Supported, which meant the library would have to bring their budget proposals to the Town Board each July for funding; 2. School District Library, meaning the library association must gather support from the school district voters to be established; or 3. Free Association Library, which is a library that is not tied to a government group or school district, and is free to approach the members in its chartered area any time of the year for fund raising.

The library committee decided to become a Free Association, which it remains to this day. This decision has its difficulties, as the burden remains on the Association to continue fund raising if it wants to remain in business. In the minutes of the Executive Committee of the DeWitt Community Association a few years before the library opened, they explain their reasoning for this decision as follows: ". . . if we decide on a school district basis, we must 'sell' a library to enough voters that it can be passed as a separate item in the school budget at the annual meeting in July. If we decide on a free association we can gather community support at any time. . . . Since everyone is loathe to add to an already heavy school tax burden this form of support was presently rejected. Jamesville and Southwood have never displayed much interest in a library located in the center of Dewitt for geographic reasons. Since the Town Board appropriates $200 annually for support of the East Syracuse library we might be able to expect a like amount for Dewitt, but possibly not more. Therefore it was generally agreed among those present that a free association was the best and perhaps only way to start a library for Dewitt."

Once they'd decided to be a free association, the problem was how to set up a regular source of funding. They did manage to raise enough money initially to keep the library open for 3 years, which exceeded their goal, but it was necessary to establish solid methods of support money for the future of the library. The original Board of Trustees was elected from amongst the library's first contributors to the fund drive. During the twenty years prior to 1962, one of the big reasons the library was stalled was because the association couldn't find land or a building suitable to house a library. This problem was solved in 1960 when Eagan Real Estate offered the library rent-free space in their Shoppingtown property. In the official library plan, it states that "The Shoppingtown Merchants Association has offered to provide space for the library. This is equivalent to a contribution of over $4,000 per year."

And this is the story of how we became a Free Association Library. Click on the pictures below to view full-size versions of early documents, as well as a picture of Jack Robertson.