West Bend Community Memorial Library

WBCML Annual Report for 2002:

2002 was another fine year for our library and our patrons. Although we
didn't win the Wisconsin Library of the Year award as we did in 2001, we
had other significant successes such as increases in circulation, program
attendance, online catalog connections, number of registered borrowers,
reference questions answered, number of readers who successfully completed
the Summer Reading Program and facilities and residents served by our
Outreach Services program.

WACCOOL Consortium - In 2002, Slinger Community Library became a member of
the Washington County Consortia of Online Libraries, joining the West Bend,
Germantown and Hartford libraries. The combined database provides access
for more than 89,000 registered borrowers to over 450,000 holdings. About
38,000 items that were requested by WACCOOL users, were delivered between
the libraries by the Mid-Wisconsin Federated Library System daily van
service. The TIGER project (Technical Integration to Gain Enhancement of
Resources) resulted in the lending and borrowing of more than 2600 items by
and for WACCOOL patrons.
Another major milestone for WACCOOL in 2002 was the addition of IPAC, an
enhanced library catalog accessed through the Internet as a link from each
library webpage. The WEBPAC catalog search is still available and is well
used; 30,838 connections resulted in the placing of 15,829 holds or
requests. IPAC searching of the WACCOOL catalog allows the user to see book
jacket covers, search related works, connect to biographical information
about authors along with other advanced searching features. Internet users,
who are familiar with searching Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com, find IPAC
is quite similar in format.
In December, 2002 the Kewaskum Public Library Board of Trustees voted to
join WACCOOL, sending a letter of intent to join in 2003, making WACCOOL
truly a consortia of all five of the Washington County public libraries. A
contract has been drafted and an agreement with Dynix has been received, so
that Kewaskum should be a full partner in WACCOOL by March 1, 2003.

MWFLS System Resource Library - The library is currently in the second year
of a two-year resource library contract with the Mid-Wisconsin Federated
Library System. It took effect beginning in 2002. The payment, amounting to
$37,500 per year, reflects that library systems throughout Wisconsin
received no increase in the state's biennial budget. The money still
assisted us in the payment of salaries ($22,500) and the acquisition of
reference and non-fiction materials ($15,000). Our reference staff
responded to 96 resource-library reference requests during 2002 (down from
101 in 2001), which was an average of 8 per month (down from an average of
8.42 per month).

Technology - The library again expanded its collection of PC's by adding
ten new Dell Pentium computers during 2002. The patron access Internet
terminals increased from seven to nine, while the number of word processors
stayed at four. The library web site had over 1,000 hits per month. Each
web page within the site consists of several files so the annual total hits
for all files within the web site were at least 192,000. Additional dumb
terminals were replaced with PC's in 2002; this will continue to happen
because Dynix will eventually cease supporting their a DOS catalog. There
are now four CD-ROM stations with educational games and software in the
children's department. The library's total number of PC's increased from 41
to 55. The library web site received more than 23,000 hits per month,
totaling more than 276,000 hits per year. This is a 15% increase over the
240,000 hits for 2001.

Outreach Services - The Outreach Program continues to expand each year on
all fronts. Circulation increased 27% on average for each community (West
Bend, Hartford, Germantown and Slinger). Currently, visits are made weekly,
biweekly, or monthly to 32 facilities throughout Washington County. The
number of homebound participants, that is those who must be visited in
their home or apartment and have materials selected for them, is averaging
50 individuals at any given time. In addition to providing routine library
services, the Outreach Librarian assists in programming support for
activity therapy departments, develops book club and music club programs
for assisted living facilities, and on-site tutorials for facilities with
Internet access. The Outreach staff consists of a full-time librarian, 16
hours of paraprofessional assistance per week, and four volunteers who work
a total of 20 hours per month. Outreach is still expending the remaining
$8000 from the 2000 Adele Collins memorial donation. It also recently
received $280 from Cedar Bay for additional Outreach materials.
Seventy-percent of this Librarian's salary and benefits are paid for by the
combination of Washington County, the City of Hartford, and the Village of
Germantown.

Children's Services and Programs - During 2002, there were 132 regular
story times (96 morning and 36 evening programs) with an attendance of more
than 4,179 (children and adults). Additionally, there were 13 special story
times for visiting preschools, Head Start and day care facilities. These
were attended by more than 260 children. Some of the most well received and
well attended events of the year, those monthly special entertainment
programs that are sponsored by Kiwanis plus other special family programs
(20 in all), were attended by more than 3,400 people. Our librarians gave
tours to various scouting groups, children who are schooled at home and
other youth organizations. Our Children's Librarian held 3
intergenerational book discussions attended by a total of 77 Silverbrook
students and senior citizens. The Librarian visited the library in
Germantown to do a Crafts Day with children for the Summer Reading program
there (assisting about 75 children). The Summer Reading Program had 1306
registered participants (with 604 finishing the program by handing in their
completed folders). 26 student volunteers helped with this program. More
than 12,000 hours of reading were reported. There were 5 drop-in craft
sessions during the summer reading program with about 270 total
participants. In addition, several staff members represented the library at
the Celebrate Families Day at the Washington County Fair Park. Lastly, the
Milwaukee Bucks sponsored Reading Challenge had 102 participants.

Circulation Statistics - In 2002, from a patron base of 43,687 registered
borrowers, the library circulated 551,438 items, an increase of 4.56% over
the previous year. That means our patrons each averaged 12.62 items checked
out per year. This is the second consecutive year that we exceeded the
half-million mark! Our circulation to County residents totaled 240,510
items compared to 234,993 for 2001, an increase of 2.34%. In terms of
checked-out items that we are reimbursed for by the County, the library
accounted for 56.4% of that total for 2002. In total, of the 1,073,008
items circulated by all five of the libraries in Washington County, we
accounted for 51.39% of that final number.

Staff - During 2002, our longest term staff member, Barb Christy, retired
after more than 38 years of service to the library and the community.
Although she can never be replaced, we were fortunate in that we were able
to hire a new Youth Services librarian who completes her Masters degree
program in 2003. At this time, we have 32 people who are employed by the
library. We anticipate there will be several more retirements within the
next two years.


Michael Tyree, Library Director
January 24, 2003