Volunteers take sting out of library cutbacks

Credit: Bruce Matlock/The Statesville Record & Landmark

A retired elementary school librarian, Lydia Green volunteers two days a week as a "shelver" at the Iredell County Public Library. Green saw the need after the Library's part-time employees were laid-off and signed up to help. "With volunteers, like me, we do pretty good on most days," Green said. "But some days, we could use more help."

By: Jim Mcnally | Statesville Record & Landmark
Published: September 09, 2010

Lydia Green knows her way around a bookshelf. A few years ago, she retired from her position as the librarian and media director at an elementary school in Gaston County.
But for a good part of the work day Wednesday, Green was weaving in and out of the stacks at the Iredell County Library’s main branch in downtown Statesville.
Green, who puts in two days a week at the library, is one of the several volunteers “hired” in the past two months to pick up the slack since county leaders made budget cuts resulting in the elimination of all the library’s part-time workers.
“I enjoy doing it,” Green said. “It’s fun and I like meeting people.”
Library Director Steve Messick said the volunteers have been an important component in allowing for the changes to be as seamless as possible.
“Volunteers have been very helpful in filling in the gaps,” he said, and added that the number of books checked out in the past two months tracks along the same lines as the same time last year.
“We are checking out almost 700,000 items,” he said. “And those items all have to be re-shelved.”
Most of that work has fallen to Green and about two dozen other volunteers, some of whom have come from the Friends of the Library, a group that supports the library in a number of ways.
“To be honest, I don’t know what we would have done without the volunteers,” said Gary Elam, the library’s circulation manager. “We’d really be sunk without them.”
Since the July 1 start of the current fiscal year, the library — along with the Harmony and Troutman branches — has trimmed back its hours of operation by 14 percent. A large chunk of that time was the closing of the facility on Sundays.
Elam, who is often at the front desk of the library and deals a lot with the public, said the largest reaction since the changes went into effect have been those of sympathy.
“Our patrons know we have almost just as much work to do but have fewer people to do it with,” he said. “People are dealing with these same kinds of issues in their own lives.”
Karen Porch and her son Jacob visit the library “almost every day.” Both said they have noticed little changes since the cutbacks were made.
“It still seems the same to me,” said Karen.
Lozana Tate was exiting the library with a huge stack of books Wednesday afternoon. She said she is an avid reader and a frequent library user..
“The only thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes I forget it’s closed on Sundays until I drive by and see no one here and remember again,” she said.
While Messick said that while book check-outs have remained the same as last year over the past two months, the DVD checkouts have been off by about 25 percent.
But Messick said that is less owed to the reduction in hours than to the reduction in movies.
Along with losing its part-time workers, the library’s trimmed budget meant that it could not afford to buy any new DVDs.
Messick said the decision not to purchase more new films was based largely on his belief that a library is “at its core” a place to find books.
“I think our main mission is bringing readers and books together,” he said. “And if we can’t get the books, that has a great impact on our mission.”

Volunteers take sting out of library cutbacks

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