By Mark Gregory
Editorial Director
@Hear_The_Beard
mark@buglemewspapers.com
As the calendar year ended, the White Oak Library District rang out 2018 with style as its branches celebrated with the annual Noon Year’s Eve — an event that allows families to celebrate the new year as a whole since the young children, and some of their parents, will be asleep far before midnight rolls around.
While 2018 ended with a balloon drop and sparkling cider, 2019 was not all the district had to celebrate.
(Photo by Mark Gregory)
“Our fiscal year does not line up with the calendar year, so as of July 1 – the end of the year for us – when we did the stats, it was the second busiest year ever in our history, so that was pretty gratifying,” said White Oak Library Director Scott Pointon. “July through November of this new fiscal year, we are slightly ahead of where we were last year. We are still trending upward. We are still busy and getting busier as far as materials going out the door, but that only tells part of the story of our libraries.
“We are such a community gathering place now. Our meeting rooms, when they are not being used for library programs, they are almost constantly in use by community groups – Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, homeowner’s associations, all kinds of different activities.”
While non-library programs are filling the gaps, it is the branch-generated programs that are the bread and butter of the White Oak District.
“Our library programming is just booming. We are doing more and more stuff and attracting more and more audiences,” Pointon said. “We really have made programming a priority of ours now for a decade. We have tried to pull out the stops and really do a good job for our public.”
He pointed out that there are mainly three types of programming the library offers.
“We have three kinds of programming. We have the repetitive programming – the story hours and book clubs – the things that happen weekly or once a month on a Tuesday. Those are great and important, but they tend to be smaller groups,” Pointon said. “Then there are the one off programming on any topic for all ages – the ones for adults tend to be in the late afternoon or early evening. It could be a Lewis professor talking about the history of Al Capone in Chicago or a cooking demonstration. The third component are the events – they tend to happen one a year and tend to pull in big crowds. The recent Countdown to Noon Year is something we have been doing for years. Some are simple ideas like that, which are a lot of fun and bring a lot of people to come out and enjoy themselves, but others are like Comicopolis, which is huge and brought in over 1,000 people. Our next big fest is at Romeoville and is STEM Fest, which is Science, Technology, Engineering and Math and this is our third year doing it. It kind of was assumed to be an event for kids and that’s great – but this year, we are really going to expand it and it will be for adults, too.”
A luxury White Oak has is the fact that it has three branches — Crest Hill, Lockport and Romeoville and is able to cater programming to the community in each town, while all are still in driving distance of each other to accommodate the entire district.
“We tailor which major events happen at which branch based on the situation of that branch,” Pointon said. “Take Comicopolis – the city government of Lockport has been a great partner for us. They are really into the arts and that is all about graphic novel and comic art. They have allowed us to do things that we might not be able to do in other locations. Romeoville is in the Valley View School District and it is a consolidated school district, which when we want to market STEM Fest, we can market it to one district and it gets out to 15 schools. Our Crest Hill branch is within a very, very short drive of three or four senior only housing developments, so we do grandparents day out there and that is a huge hit. All of those grandparents bring their grandchildren with them and it is an event for preschoolers and seniors rolled into one and it is a really fun event.”
The one thing all the districts share about programming is the cost to the residents.
“We are almost 100 percent funded by local property taxes and our feeling is that our users of the library have already paid their property taxes. We never charge just an admittance fee to go to a program or event,” Pointon said. “The only time we will ever charge for a program is if there is a craft project and the materials are pricy – we may charge just for the supplies and they are getting something to bring home at the end of it. Other than the reimbursement type fees, we never charge anyone for programs and we are proud of that.”
The White Oak District is looking to expand its services and programming into to 2019 calendar year as events like Comicopolis will grow even more.
The White Oak Library District will also try to pass a referendum this spring for the sixth time.
The referendum, which was voted down in November, would have cost the average homeowner less than $20 per year, is being sought to, among other things, increase the hours at all of the three branches.