Transitions

Transitions. That's the word that crops up the most when I think about the last few years here at the Sumter County Library. It has been a time of constant change, packing and unpacking, moving from one location to another while our Wesmark Branch and the Downtown Library were being renovated and expanded. It has definitely been a challenge for the Library staff, and I know it has been for our patrons as well. Having to hand out flashlights to help people find their way around the stacks as we had to do in one of our temporary locations wasn't exactly the ideal library environment, but somehow everything worked out and the Sumter community was amazingly patient. Now we are settling into our new Library and the consensus opinion seems to be that it was worth all the effort. I began working at the Library in June of 1980, twenty-seven years ago, and even back then it was apparent that we sorely needed more space. We have that now and the entire staff at all our locations (Downtown, Wesmark, and South Sumter) is dedicated to offering the best possible library service we can. Whether you are a regular patron, drop by once in a while, or have never used the library, come in and see what we have to offer.

And please let us know what we can do to improve our services - let us know what kind of books, movies, audiobooks, magazines, etc. you would like the Library to have in the collection. Also, share your ideas of what types of programs you would like the Library to offer. We look forward to hearing from you.

About our blog - I was at the American Library Association conference recently, and many of the topics were centered around social software and web-based information services such as Wikis, Blogs, Web 2.0, Podcasting and Flickr. The big question and challenge facing libraries is how to properly use these technologies to actually improve services to patrons - it should not be a matter of just jumping on board with the latest trend. Hopefully this blog can be a good starting point to test the waters. I hope as many members of the Library staff as possible will share information about what's going on at the Library - whether its a program like the Hot Nights - Cool Movies, the appearance of the Charleston County Dive Team on July 11th, or just the latest bestsellers we've added to the collection.

Robert Harden