I Suck At Friends Of The Norwell Public Library

tonight was meeting night.

our first meeting took place at the south shore ymca in quincy. the next session of classes offered by the ymca is beginning soon. so naturally, there was a group meeting to discuss the latest protocols for the class.

the highlight from the ymca meeting (aside from the interesting tomato-flavored popcorn snack): the research area is going green! by going green, i mean the research area will be using non-toxic cleaners to clean the strength training equipment. also interesting... this non-toxic cleaner will be stored alongside an insecticide. oh, the irony.

immediately after the ymca meeting, karen and i made a beeline to the norwell public library for our next meeting. awhile ago, karen had joined the friends of the norwell public library as a means to give back to the community. unfortunately, i suck at friends of the norwell public library. i only attended the meeting out of sheer curiosity.

needless to say, the friends of the norwell public library meeting was quite insightful. aside from electing the group officials, the meeting provided information about the library in general.

one of the main topics of discussion was funding. it turns out that with the recent economy, funding is scarce for various services. among those services is the public library. the elected officials of the town (all of whom do not use the public library) obviously are not in favor of funding the library and want to do what is called "regionalizaton".

regionalization is basically having a service peformed for an entire region. in this case, the region would be towns like hingham and hanover or something like that. so residents of norwell would have to go to hingham or hanover for their library services. the problem: neither hingham nor hanover want to do regionalization (probably because their libraries are like palaces).

it also turns out that overdue fees do not go back to the library. in fact, the overdue fees go to the general fund for the town. so what is a public library in need of funding to do? that is the dilemma of the friends of the norwell public library. the group wants to bring awareness to the importance of the library as it relates to the community and town of norwell. and with the awareness, they hope to receive the necessary funding.

without proper funding, the library can become decertified as a library. thus, the act of using library cards at other member branches becomes obsolete. not only will library cards be affected, but services such as resume writing courses for those who are unemployed will be gone, services for activities geared toward children will be gone, other community services will be gone, etc.

to me, the information was quite interesting and insightful. i never knew there was so much to a public library. there were definitely more services than i was originally aware of. anyway, i hope things work out for the best with the library. after all, i do thoroughly enjoy our public library.