The Future of A PLACE OF OUR OWN

More changes are in store for A PLACE OF OUR OWN. In Fall of 1997, Garfield Park Branch will be included in a system-wide computer upgrade to a client-server PC-based WAN (wide area network). Once the upgrade is complete, we will have to analyze any changes to the procedures we have been using or services we have been offering because a different system will be in place.

Once adjustments have been made to the new computers, another needs assessment will be conducted to assess our status and make specific plans for the next eighteen months at the branch. A new permanent branch manager will be hired at the end of 1997 or the beginning of 1998.

We intend to continue the Teen Advisory Council, and hope to continue the electronic newsletter. We hope to experiment with programming, and we hope to do more outreach in the neighborhood schools.

Most of the young adults who used the library to get books and magazines in 1995 (before computers) still do, and occasionally do a stint on the computers. Some of the new computer users are checking out magazines and a few books, and some only use the computers.

We've speculated about how much a young person reads in an hour of net surfing, and we're guessing that it's about 15-20 pages. Magazines and the YA fiction collection of horror and science fiction have been the best tools for encouraging non-monitor reading in our computer-intensive regulars, but it seems that the other YA's have been reading all along and like the new materials as well as the computers.

It is this relationship between computers, books, and reading that we will try to investigate next. We're adding several new magazine subscriptions, and will continue to add especially to the YA horror and science fiction collections.

The teens will have to let us know what else to try, and we're quite sure they will.