April 30, 2003 cont'd
Characteristics of the people of the West Point area? I asked.
"I think they're a real friendly bunch," Mary Jo said. "It used to be pre-dominantly a German community. Now we see that changing. Hispanics are moving into the area." As a result, she says, the library has ordered a lot of bi-lingual books, which helps the Hispanics trying to learn English and those of German background trying to learn Spanish. "I've had many people comment that this is a good way to go, with the bi-lingual books, in preference to Spanish-only."
The people of West Point are a hard-working group, Mary Jo said. "The work ethic in this area is very strong."
One advantage for Mary Jo of working in a small library: "I'm not stuffed back in the office all the time. I can be out at the front desk, I can get to know our patrons, get to know what they are interested in, and I can use that information when ordering books for the library."
And when the school kids come in to do reports and they are looking for references," she said, "I find out real fast what we don't have. A lot of teachers will let us know ahead of time what will be needed, especially for big projects."
"Our circulation goes up every month," Mary Jo said. "The circulation numbers for this year will be bigger than for last year. Last month we checked out 6,000 books, videos, audio books, magazines, etc."
To what can she attribute this increasing patronage of the library? "I don't know," she said. "It would be nice to say it's because we've ordered all the right things, but I don't know that that's the reason."
The library has a genealogy department. Much of the initiative for developing that department and much of the funding for it comes from Warren Buffett's sister, Doris, "the Sunshine Lady," in honor of her mother who lived for a while in West Point. "For this size community," Mary Jo said, "we probably have one of the better genealogy departments. A lot of people come from out-of-town and out-of-state. Our primary focus is on Cuming County materials." The Sunshine Lady underwrites the cost of having someone available on Tuesdays and Thursdays to help people with genealogical searches.
"I personally don't do genealogy," Mary Jo said, "but the people who do are hooked, they're addicted. It used to be people were simply interested in tracing their genealogy back. Now they are getting interested in family stories, too. If they find that their great-great-grandfather was a horse-thief or something, they're so excited, that makes such an interesting genealogical story."
What is the most surprising thing someone has asked the library? "Someone called the library and asked if we'd check some old papers to see if there was any record of insanity in the family. They needed to know for medical reasons. They pointed us in a direction to look, a date to look. By gosh, someone in the family did hang himself, they attributed it to 'family insanity.' We gave the person this information. You sort of wonder how that story turned out."
"We do have all the West Point newspapers on microfilm, as much as is available, even a German paper. People can't read German, but when they locate a name they print out the article and then go have someone translate it for them."
"It's harder to staff a small library than a large library," Mary Jo said. "Evenings and weekends, we have only one person working in the library. I think people recognize that we can do only so much."
To be continued [after my return from Montana]....
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