It's a start...

Libraries are curious places. Often, they are at the forefront of technological change. Librarians are, as a group, surprisingly adventurous when it comes to discovering and using new tools to communicate information. The Hutchinson Public Library has had an electronic catalog since the 1980’s and has had the ability to answer research questions through chat, email and online databases for years, here. Heck, you can even play games at the library on our periodic gaming days.

Paradoxically, libraries are also sometimes slow to make institutional change. Take this blog for example. It represents a years-old method to communicate with ones constituents and yet the Hutchinson Public Library directors, past and up to this point, have not used one. Administrators sit in an office and have people and doors and walls between them and their customers, right?

We are interested in useful change here at HPL. There are many exciting new things going on at the library that, I hope, will be embraced by you, the people we serve. My intent for this blog is to post information about new things we are trying and provide a way to start a dialog.

In this first post, I want to present to you a few things we have begun over the past year or so. A major addition to HPL has been our new Children’s Outreach Coordinator. This wonderful person has taken our little idea of reaching out to daycares through rotating book collections and occasional storytimes and turned it into a fantastic program that has DOUBLED the number of children HPL reaches with books and stories.

We have also reorganized two departments in order to provide improved in-house storytime and children’s programming.

We have a coffee shop now, The Reader’s Cup – come in and try it out.

For several months, we have been working to create a computer training lab separate from our public computer area. This new lab will allow us to expand our free class offerings, provide a place for qualified groups from the community to come and do their own training, and provide greater access to our public computers.

Finally, to tie back in to the paradox I mentioned at the beginning, we are changing our catalog system at the beginning of March. HPL has used the Dynix/Horizon system for many years, but that company rested on its laurels, didn’t recognize the need to innovate and has now fallen into disarray. Our new system has some great features which I will delve into in the upcoming days and weeks.

For now, I would like to hear from you, the users of the library. Tell me what you think and tell me what you would like to know about libraries in general and the Hutchinson Public Library specifically.

-gregg