Burns Lake Public Library
2012 Provincial Grant Report
Local priorities
In 2012, we completed our five year strategic plan. The final draft was not finished until December;however, we did our best to align our activities with the strategic directions drafted in March.
Our number one goal this year was to promote the use of the Burns Lake Public Library and reach people to increase literacy. We work each and every day, at the library and outside in our personal lives to promote the library. Initiatives such as our survey are a great way to reach out to those who don’t come to the library for a variety of reasons and show them that libraries aren’t just about books. Sometimes we don’t think that the non-book services at the library make literacy connections, but we had one elderly gentleman come into the library. He has lived in our community all his life, but had never used the library. He had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and had been told to find a book on it. So, he came to the library and we were able to set him up with some good material on diet and care. Well, the young woman who brought him in was one of our internet regulars. She may not normally take books home with her, but when someone needed some, she knew where to find them.
Another goal that was set and has been an ongoing ideal is to maintain and improve our services. Sometimes it seems like a struggle just to maintain the status quo. But we want to strive for ways to better the basics of what we do each and every day. Community engagement is an important part of making sure that our patrons appreciate the services we provide and asking them for their input on what else we can do within, and sometimes outside of, our library walls.
Staying current and relevant while providing a variety of resources and services is also a point from our strategic plan. The technology challenges that arise as we try to provide these current services for patrons are always a joy. The influx of e-readers and people struggling with Library to go when we joined in June was huge. We tried to learn ourselves and then pass that knowledge along. Many hours were spent on the phone and in person as we tried to instruct people. But we took that challenge and dove in head first and it was definitely a success, measured by how many people are using the service and are quite happy with it.
Last, but not least, we want to promote literacy through social gatherings. Libraries can be intimidating places to folks that are not familiar with them. Through fun social gatherings, such as a Pizza and PJ’s night, we can show families that the library is a place where there are friendly faces and that there are stories and fun to be had there. In 2012, we hosted our first Family Literacy Day celebration. When planning, we were hoping that maybe we would get 30 people to come join us. We did all the promotion and it sounded like there would be some who would come. Imagine our surprise when over 100 people showed up that evening!!! It was a bit hectic and we certainly took away ideas of what could work better next time, but we were excited that that many families wanted to come celebrate literacy with us. The memories and connections from the evening will remain for years to come.
Provincial priorities
We continue to work at sharing our resources with our library community with interlibrary loans. Our numbers in 2012 were higher than years past. This is thanks to a dedicated I.L.L. Clerk who works hard to not only find books for our patrons, but also to fill requests from other libraries. Patrons are always delighted with the service and one gentleman wanted to pay for his request, only to discover it was free of charge. He was astonished that such a great feature was included with his library card!
BC OneCard continues to be utilized in our library. There is very little we won’t share with those who come through the doors. As far as memory serves, we didn’t have to tell any BC One patrons “no” in 2012. And as a small library, our patrons are delighted when they learn they can walk into Prince George or Vancouver and borrow some of their materials!!
We continue to work closely with various community groups, including our local literacy task force. Through this partnership, we are able to travel on the “Words on Wheels (WOW) Bus” to outlying communities and reach children and youth who wouldn’t normally be able to visit a library on a regular basis. The bus has quite a selection of books and other materials on it that are available for the users to take away, without any rules or expectations. This is a major step to provide these materials to homes that may not have many other books in them.
We have approximately 12 school aged children in each of the two communities that we visit that come to the bus regularly. The delight and joy on the children’s faces as they enter the WOW Bus is wonderful. They make sure to ask when we’ll be back before we even leave. Our bus driver has an opportunity to go to different places with other groups and he feels that the work in one remote community, in particular, is “the most good” done with the bus.
Our library continues to be an integral part of the North Central Library Federation. We value the relationships that continue to grow with neighboring libraries and participate in initiatives that leverage shared costs.
2012 marked the first community survey that Burns Lake Public had done in a number of years. We drafted the survey, borrowing from other wonderful libraries in the province that had copies of their surveys online. Through the NCLF’s Survey Monkey subscription, we were able to offer the survey online as well. We also utilized our social media, particularly Facebook, to spread the word about the survey. We received over 200 responses. While this is only 3% of our service population, previous experiences trying to get feedback from our community have taught us that this is a pretty good response rate.
We were also able to respond to several things that our community wanted, one of them being a change of hours in October. So far, the feedback has been mostly positive. People are delighted that we are open six days a week and if we had more funds, we could probably extend hours further still.
It was also encouraging to hear positive comments from our patrons. People who know and love the library were quite vocal and it really inspired us to keep doing the work we do. Here’s a quote that I thought reflected the changes we have seen in libraries in the last 50 years. “I love coming to the library. It is a friendly and warm place to go, and I find the selection of books just great. I have used the reference part of the library somewhat and find it very helpful. The only thing that I would like to see maybe a little more of would be a greater selection of the large print books. That is because of my age though... Great work you guys! I remember when all we had in Burns Lake was the traveling library in the early '60's. What an amazing change. Keep up the good work. You guys are awesome!!!”
The library is ultimately about helping our citizens to find the information they need. As such, we provide assistance with all manners of computer searches. If people were looking for open data, we would help them to discover that as well.
It has been standard library practice to model transparency about library decisions. We make our annual reports available to our patrons. In the coming year, we plan to publish more information to our website and social media outlets.
Our children’s programming continues to be a major focus for our staff. We have 10 groups of approximately 10 children that either visit the library or have the librarian visit them each week. These times of stories, songs, poems and crafts are a huge enrichment to their learning time. Some groups take books back to their class with them, adding to the resources available at their school/daycare. There is a little guy that started coming to the library with his school group. He loved it so much that he got his mom to bring him in as well. They were thrilled to discover the public computers and now come regularly for computer time and take out books. Another autistic boy would not even open books at his daycare. After the children’s librarian found Spiderman books for him, he is now excited to come and find out what she has set aside for him each week.
Summer Reading Club was offered again in 2012. There were almost 100 children enrolled in the program, with groups up to 20 kids attending different sessions each week. The summer student, hired with funding from Canada Summer Jobs, dreamed up some big events for the summer. With everything from the Hunger Games to Harry Potter, many of the tween group came in record numbers. Some of the boys even managed to make it here twice a week, coming once with a younger sibling and then returning again for their own age group.
We also have a monthly group for homeschoolers. This has led to increased social interaction for the children and the building of support for the parents. Time at the library gives them an opportunity to talk about what curriculum they are using and what works for their children. At the beginning, siblings would stick together, but as time has gone on, friendships have formed and now you’ll see the boys hanging out together and the girls doing the same.
We value the Provincial Grants and appreciate the capacity they give to our libraries. The literacy and resource sharing priorities help us to play an integral role in our communities. Thank you.