Washington County's library, community partnerships create invigorated library services

About the Program

Category: Libraries (Best in Category)

Year: 2012

As a result of the economic downturn, counties have been taking a second look at the expenditures and necessity of community libraries. Many counties have begun shutting down libraries in municipalities that do not meet a high enough population threshold to justify their continued use. However, governments such as Washington County continue to promote public education and access to library materials, even when a brick-and-mortar building is not present in the community. Washington County began their Community Partnerships program to provide library materials to citizens of all municipalities across the region. The county has partnered with communities that do not have access to a library through constructive dialogue. As a result of this dialogue, communities have created reading rooms within their city hall, defunct library, or other community buildings. These reading rooms are not full service libraries but they do contain books and games donated by the community. However, these reading rooms also boast the main aspect of Washington County’s program: an inter-community library computer kiosk. From this kiosk, citizens can request books, music, movies, and other library materials from other libraries that can be shuttled to the kiosk location. The requesting individual is then given a code to a locker where they can access the library materials once they are delivered. The lockers are available to individuals at any hour of the day, any day of the week. The kiosk-locker system has proven to be very efficient and beneficial to communities that do not have direct access to a library. With a capital cost of only $65,000 for the installation of the kiosk-locker system, the only other charges required to implement this extremely beneficial program cover the operation of a shuttle between libraries to provide materials requested by residents. Being that this system is much more affordable than building and maintaining a physical library, it can be very beneficial for counties that need to bring library resources to both low-income and low-population communities.