After suffering from funding cuts and the loss of their staff, the Union City Public Library may finally be getting the help it has needed for the past couple of years.
The library’s first Friends of the Library chapter will hold its first meeting on Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. on the second floor of the 43rd Street Public Library.
“This is a big undertaking,” said Friends of the Library Director Lu Kirkinis. “But a much needed one in the community.”
“We’ve been trying to get this off the ground for over a year now,” Library Board of Trustees member Joe Sivo, who is also responsible for getting this project off the ground.
The library has looked at different Friends organizations throughout the area for ideas. However, Sivo said that they would like to model their organization on Hoboken’s.
“Their Friends of the Library is so active,” said Kirkinis of the Hoboken Library’s Friends of the Library organization. “They give so much to the community. I just hope we can do the same.”
Friends of the Library is a national organization designed to create awareness and appreciation for libraries and their services. Local chapters have helped raise funds for non-budgeted items and also do volunteer work at the library.
“Any library here they have a really effective friends group, the library gets better,” said Library Director William Breedlove.
Getting Organized
While Sivo is a member of the Library Board of Trustees, he said that he wants the Friends to run as a separate entity.
“I want [the organization] to be its own entity and making their own decisions,” said Sivo. “We want it to run unfettered by any outside influences.”
Sivo said that no member of the Board of Trustees would be able to sit on the executive board of the Friends of the Library.
At the first meeting, sign-ups will be held as well as the passing of the by-laws.
The organization will have a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and three members at large as well as chairpersons.
The organization’s temporary directors are Sivo, Kirkinis and Susan Murray, a teacher at Robert Waters School. These directors will hold office until the annual meeting when officers are selected.
The current steering committee includes the three directors and Chary Mikel, Richard Kalbian, Julia Rodriguez and Gayle Kaufman, who was just recently named as a Library Trustee.
The group will meet monthly, with a general membership meeting held at least twice a year.
The steering committee has already met about four times.
Community feedback
One of the Friends of the Library organization’s main purposes is to invite the community’s input into what the library can provide.
“The Friends group is a critical link between the library and the community,” said Breedlove.
Kirkinis added, “The group invites the community into the library to see what is available.”
Sivo, a member of the Library Board of Trustees, has already heard a lot of the community’s complaints about what the library is not providing.
“I hear the complaints of people about the library all the time,” said Sivo. “It would be nice to pull the resources of these people together. What do you want to see that the city cannot provide? And let’s make that happen.”
Two students from Robert Waters School in Union City were invited to the last Steering Board meeting to give their opinions on what they would like to see at the library. Music and art were at the top of their list.
Cutting funding
The top complaints that the library hears now are not enough new books and library hours. Right now the 15th Street location of the library is not open on Saturdays or any evenings.
However, much of these problems can be attributed to the lack of funding provided for the library.
Breedlove explained that between 1992 and 1999, 63 percent of the library’s city funding was cut, some of that due to the fact that the library did not meet various state requirements.
“Currently, we are only meeting about 10 percent of the state’s standard requirements,” said Breedlove. The state has set minimum standards regarding the number of staff, hours of operation, new books purchased, periodicals subscribed to and Internet access.
Breedlove said that according to the state, the city’s two-branch library should have at least five professional staff members. Right now, the library system only has two certified librarians: Breedlove and Nolan Ledet, the branch librarian.
As of June 30, 1999, a major portion of the staff was let go. The library is trying to replace some of the staff now.
Since the library is understaffed, it is impossible for it to remain open long hours or to provide the proper amount of new books needed to meet the requirement.
The state requires 60 “unique hours” a week. Unique hours means that both locations cannot be open at the same time and count twice.
The state also requires that the library add 5,800 new books a year, or a 10 percent increase. The library also must subscribe to 150 periodicals.
With the addition of the EBSCO vendor, the library will meet the requirement for periodicals. EBSCO is a computer periodical vendor that was bought by the state for all of the public school and non-profit libraries. The vendor holds 1,200 full text periodicals and 400 newspapers. However, the library has upgraded this provider to include 1,800 full text periodicals.
“This service allows patrons to perform very good quality research,” said Sivo.
The library also recently installed a new microfilm scanner for its patrons, and is planning to purchase its own Internet server so that the library’s website and databases can be accessed from a home computer.
“We are never going to get to the point where there is nothing else that we can do to make the library better,” said Breedlove.