The library's 2012 budget, which was approved on December 14th by the Trustees of the library, has been posted on the webpage, under Board of Trustees/Budgets.  I've read a comment or two that was uninformed about how the library spends its money, to the effect that books are not important anymore.  Not true!   In 2012, the printed book will still be the #1 format acquired by the library, $335,000, or 57% of the entire materials budget. 

As soon as I master the tricky steps that are necessary to post more charts and graphs I will, including showing you how strong book borrowing is with our customers relative to media items.

On another topic- I encourage public attendance and participation at meetings of the Library Board.  The first meeting in 2012 will be on Wednesday, Jan. 18th at 7:00 p.m. at the Main Library.  At least four new members of the Board will begin their terms that night. 

Have a safe and happy new year!

Susan O'Neal

Director of the Library 

From December 12^th until sometime in January (exact date unknown), the automated telephone system will not be functioning.  The library will  be migrating to a new version of our catalog during this time, and we will need to phase in the automated telephone system after we get the catalog up and running.  During this transition period customers will not be able to renew using the automated phone renewal system.  They also will not receive any automated phone calls (for overdues, for holds to pickup, etc.).  We will be offering, as an alternative, the following options:

1)Email notification

2)Online access through the “My Account” feature at www.mtpl.org

We will be putting bookmarks in all our hold books and giving out bookmarks to all customers checking out material over the next week, letting you know that you will need to switch to email notification and self-service account access through the website in order to have 24/7 access to library services.

We are sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience during this transition.