With students returning to school, Crookston Public Library Director Chris Boike is reminding teachers and students about the resources available to them through the library, including a new system that will make it easier for teachers to access books in a timely manner.
Boike has been working on an expansion of the library’s Homebound program, which provides community members who are homebound with a book ordering system that also includes delivery. Boike explained that Booker’s Book Buddies would take that concept and apply it to teachers, who can place book orders for their classrooms and save them the time of finding and selecting the books themselves. “Booker’s Book Buddies is really designed to have teachers fill out a sheet, sort of a questionnaire about what it is they want, when do they need it, how many do they need,” Boike said. “They’re meant to stay in the school, in the classroom, and basically, we would drop them off, we’ll deliver them, and then we can pick them up to save teachers’ time, and we do the looking for them. We actually put the books together for them. If they need 25 books on a particular subject or theme, we can put those together and then drop them off at the school and then pick them back up.”
Boike believes that it is important to have a local library available to students and teachers as an additional option for book rentals, computer access, and research spaces, as many school districts across America provide fewer resources to school libraries. “School libraries sadly are not what they used to be. So school districts aren’t putting the resources towards libraries anymore, and that’s why you have a public library to help fill in the gaps. There are still a couple of libraries locally at some of the schools, but they just don’t have the resources to get the titles and to get the newer material that we obviously have, so we’re a stopgap. That’s a good thing, and that’s what a public library is for, and so we’re happy to be that that resource for people.”
Another service offered by the library is its Print program, which allows people to print items for free and pick them up at their convenience. The program is one of the library’s most popular services, but Boike encourages people to pick up their printed items promptly, as there have been times when they sit for an extended period without being picked up. “We have Print, which if you, for whatever reason, can’t print at home, if you’re homeschooling, whatever it might be, and you need to send a print job to the library through Print, you can do that. You just download the Print app and send it, and then just pick it up at the library when it’s convenient, but realizing that has to be done within 24 hours. After a week, we’ll probably shred it.”
September is also Library Card Sign-Up Month, so Boike encourages anyone who hasn’t gotten their card or hasn’t used it in a while to come into the library and get a new library card, so they can have access to thousands of books through the Northwest Regional Library system and MNLINK, the state’s interlibrary loan network. “We would love to get you signed up for a library card,” she said. “You might say, ‘Oh, I have a library card. I’ve had it since 1973 here in Crookston,’ or for that matter, you might even say ‘I’ve had it since 2003 or 2013.’ But if you haven’t used it in a few years, you’re probably not in the system anymore because after a while, they go stagnant, and they get purged from the system. So we have to put you back in again, have you fill out a new library card application, bring in proof of your physical address here in town, or if you own land in one of the seven counties of LARL, you can get a library card. It’s great.”
The Crookston Public Library is located at 110 N. Ash Street. For more information on library services, visit www.larl.org.
