Lake City Public Library Site Visit

Post date: May 20, 2013 3:26:24 PM

Lake City Public Library Site Visit

The Lake City Public Library is a very new building, built in 2003, with lots of comfy seating areas. There are two large circles of armchairs and rocking chairs as well as a windy seating area, another window area in a children’s area, and a lot of decorative shelving in which they display new titles. They have four regular staff members (including myself when I start in June), plus Connie Smith who is there for job training and sits at the desk. Two of the regular staff work twenty hours per week, while the director works thirty and the children’s librarian, Vicki Tasler, does nine hours a week during the school year, but twenty-five hours per week during the summer. She also works as a librarian at the school, so she is freer to do programs in the summer.

There are three volunteers who sit at the desk for two to three hours at a time and rotate throughout the week so that the library has two people on hand during the busier hours. Volunteers are trained to do circulation work and there is one volunteer who processes materials for the library.

The programs available at the library are the Summer Reading Program, Thursday morning coffee, school in-service days, a book club that meets once a month, Poets Night Out which started as a library sponsored group and is now run by it’s members, and Preschool story time. Looking around I noticed that the behavioral policy was displayed on the front counter, but others (the ones that involved the public) were said to be included on the website. The hours are quite similar to the hours of the Rockwell City Public Library, with which I am familiar, but mid-week the Lake City Public Library is open later (8:00pm from Tuesday through Thursday rather than 5:30pm).

There was a large selection of audio books available and I was surprised to see that there was also a separate section each for Biographies and for Westerns, being that this was quite a small library. The movies were divided into two towers and there was also a tiny shelf in the children’s area of movies for the tinier of the tots.

The library looks as if they did a good job of utilizing their space to provide a good atmosphere for sticking around and reading by one’s self. I also noted a community room with a small attached kitchen that was available to the public and also a small conference room which looked as if it were for board meetings. The location of the library is very easy to get to, being on the square in the middle of town and having enough parking spaces around the square, except perhaps if there is a movie playing next door. The movies only play at 7:30pm Friday though Sunday though, so the library should not be affected unless there is a special program going on after hours.

Their online catalog makes for a cool way to search, but the library website could use some re-designing. It looks as if a spreadsheet was integrated onto the home page, but there is nothing to separate the links between the cells for easier comprehension. The most difficult part about the page is that there is no button to go back to the home page unless you are able to find the sitemap, which blends into the top right corner. Perhaps this summer I might be able to suggest a few changes when I start working at this location.