Wheeler Memorial Library Maintains Essential Services

Photo caption: At the final stop of the Western Massachusetts Regional Library System's bookmobile at the Moore-Leland Library in North Orange, Dianne Salcedo and Manuel King, library employees; bookmobile driver David Ferland, and library volunteer Norman Flye, select materials to supplement the library's collections.


Wheeler Memorial Library Maintains Essential Services

Wheeler Memorial Library Director Walt Owens has announced that the Western Massachusetts Regional Library System's (WMRLS) bookmobile service made its last stop today at the Moore-Leland Library in North Orange. The bookmobile, which provided supplementary deposit collections for Wheeler Memorial Library and other libraries across Western Massachusetts is the latest victim of the continuing state budget crisis.

Fortunately, the heavily used delivery service that allows library patrons to receive books and other materials from libraries across Massachusetts will continue unchanged, at least for now. According to Owens, this service is essential for library patrons to have access to a much broader range of media and books than the Orange libraries could possibly afford. "While we will miss the supplementary bookmobile collections", said Owens, "we are very pleased for our patrons to still be able to benefit from the access to materials from all Massachusetts libraries." The Wheeler and Moore-Leland Library patrons borrow approximately 10,000 books per year through the regional library's delivery service.

Owens reports that the Library Trustees are committed to maintaining programs and services during the current economic downturn. The use of reserve funds from bequests and accumulated state aid has allowed the library to maintain hours and staff at current levels, although those funds are very limited. "Orange residents need the library more than ever during hard times, and the Trustees and Library Staff are committed to being here for them," said Owens.

According to Mary King, Regional Librarian with WMRLS, a variety of things make this step necessary---a decade of budget problems, a more recent lack of drivers to take the bookmobile out and also a lack of technical services staff to promptly acquire and process a collection, and most recently the very real threat of huge budget cut for next year with possible mergers of regional library systems.

~ Walt Owens, Wheeler Memorial Library, Orange

Transformations at the Wheeler Memorial Library in Orange

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PHOTO CAPTION: Some of the creatures recently seen in the Wheeler Memorial Library. Bottom to top to left to right: Zoe Basque, Baylee Rousseau, and Hailey Sousa, Colleen and Taylor Basque, Alyssa Rousseau and Saydie True

Imaginations ran on the wild side at the Wheeler Memorial Library when volunteer Zita Bridges came to work her magic with face paints. Children and adults took part in the fun of pretending to be everything from pumpkins to spiders, butterflies to tigers, and even a fairy or two. Librarian Candy Cross, looking like the Cat and the Hat, supervised the making of Oobleck, miniature scarecrows, monster goop, and spiders. It was a fun free time for all who attended.

~ Candy Cross, Children's Librarian, Wheeler Memorial Library, 49 East Main St Orange MA 01364; 978-544-2495, ext 103

Wheeler Memorial Library's POETRY SLAM a Big Success!

We had a lot of fun at our recent Library Poetry Slam -- it was a big success at the Wheeler Library in Orange.

• First Prize - Maureen Terence Moore of Shelburne Falls

Second Prize - Candace R. Curran of Orange

Third Prize - Robert Collen of Orange

I came in 2nd with a library poem performance titled Lamenting Your Loan. You might enjoy this...

If you had called to renew...tried
librarian's helper, reader's advisory,
conjured keyword or
asked the desk jockey for some assistance...

If you had talked to me maybe...

I would have organized a search, researched
the bottom of the drop box,
found it? deja vu displaced and steeled in stacks...
perhaps it's resting, that's all,
languid between the bed and the wall...

If you do find it,
heart, a bookmark, seems to be
caught somewhere inside it

I have and inkling
we could have kept it circulating -
rewritten in epic tantric, a shower-song and/or
refrigerator poetry to be or not to be summarized,
virtually cataloged and in rave reviewed
pillow-talk book talks...immortalized!...

with a seguel, a trilogy perhaps, but certainly not this
eulogy to a default - lost and paid!
Oh - think of the words we could have made
if you... had only called...to renew.

Candace Curran 2008
delivered with much theatrics of course