We have been notified by Canton Township that the Detroit Water and Sewer Department (DWSD) will be performing emergency repairs to the DWSD meter pit at Warren and Napier roads on Friday, July 23, which will require the shutdown of a main water feed into Canton between 10:00am and 3:30pm. We have been advised that Northwest Canton will experience low water pressure during that time; water pressure within the library may be affected. Full water pressure will be restored once the repair has been completed.

Our new returns system is here! This new system will allow us to better serve you and more accurately handle the 2 million+ items you checkout each year by automatically checking in returns as you put them into the slot. "Why aren't my returned items checked in yet"? is the most common question we receive over the phone and through our website, and our new system will take care of most of those issues.

With our budget cuts due to the recession — we've cut nearly 20%, or $1.2 million, from our budget since 2008 — we have held nearly all vacant positions open to save money. With fewer people working, but ever-increasing demand for materials (we hit a record of 2 million checkouts in 2009), we have struggled to keep up with all of the work that needs to be done. Many of you have experienced this when you return an item to the library and it takes us a day to clear your record. After holiday closures, it was not uncommon for us to need several days to catch up with all of the returns. We are only human, and simply reached a breaking point where our manual processes could not keep up.

Realizing that we were overwhelmed, a team of library staff who know and do the work examined how we do things and made suggestions for improvement. One of their suggestions was to install an automated checkin and sorting system (the conveyor system we are using is the same as/similar to conveyor and sorting systems used by UPS, USPS, Netflix, and Wal-Mart) that would let us devote more staff time to shelving and other patron services, such as retrieving and processing holds. These suggestions coincided with our need to upgrade our RFID inventory system, and last year we began the work of retagging all of our 300,000 materials with new RFID tags, eliminating nearly all of the locking cases that so many of you hated, and six months ago we launched new checkout, self-checkout, and processing equipment.

This past spring, our Copy Center services were distributed to other areas of the library, and the room converted for the new Sorting Room. New outside and inside return slots were installed, which feed directly into that space. The sorting system arrived this week, and today's launch of our new Sorting Room marks the end of this long journey. The majority of returns will be checked in and removed from your record automatically and pre-sorted into categories (bins). This means fewer hands have to touch items to get them back on the shelves. This, along with the other improvements made and suggested by our staff, means your library card record is more accurate, we will make fewer errors, and you'll see faster turn-around of items to the hold shelf or their home shelf location.

Check out our video for a demonstration, or stop by during our regular hours to look through the glass doors and see the sorting system in action.

These improvements were funded through the library's savings account and the generous donations of the Friends of the Library. We still have some kinks to work out — nicer signage for the new outside return slot, for example, among other things — and I thank you for your support, patience, and good humor while we work on fine-tuning our new system.

Best,

Eva M. Davis, Director

I am pleased to announce that one of our librarians has been named a top librarian in Michigan! Anna Slaughter is the 2010 recipient of the Michigan Library Association's Frances H. Pletz Award for excellence in service to teens. I, along with her colleagues from the Children's, Tween, and Teen department and several members of her family, were on hand last night when the award was announced at the MLA conference in Kalamazoo.

CPL has been blessed with supportive patrons and an excellent staff. We are proud to have one of our own singled out for the wonderful work she does with teenagers in our community. Please join me in congratulating Anna on this accomplishment!

At its September Budget Hearing, the Library Board of Trustees approved the library's 2010 budget (attached), levying a reduced millage rate of 1.4980 mills to generate total revenue of $5.2 million.  This is a reduction of about $600,000 compared to our 2009 budget, and a reduction of about $1.2 million compared to our 2008 budget.  While cuts had to be made to balance the budget as required by law, the Library Board also directed the administration team to preserve our 7-day operation and maintain our 72 hours of library service per week.  I am pleased to report that we've achieved these goals without permanently cutting library hours or having to enforce furlough days or layoffs.

These necessary cuts are a result of several factors, which all fall under the umbrella of "the recession:" 

As you know from media reports, a tragic shooting occurred today outside of the library. We are thankful and relieved that library staff and patrons were not injured, and our hearts go out to the families of the two people who were involved. While the library is closed for the remainder of the day today, we will be open our regular hours on Wednesday. We thank all of you who have expressed concern about our well-being; it is a comfort to us all to have our community’s support. We also thank the Canton Township Public Safety Department for their quick and professional response to this emergency, and ask that any inquiries about their investigation be directed to them.

The Governor's Executive Order No. 2009-36 abolishes the Department of History, Arts, and Libraries as of October 1, 2009, and public libraries across the state of Michigan are concerned about how this will impact our services to you. These statewide cuts are in addition to the local cuts being made due to the recession, and are a double hit for Canton. The Michigan Library Association has issued a press release outlining the concerns public libraries throughout Michigan have with the Governor's plan as well as a position paper outlining the chilling effect the dissolution will have on statewide resource sharing, including interlibrary loan and research materials. A fact sheet is available that explains how these joint services are funded through state appropriations and federal matching funds. The Executive Order takes effect October 1, 2009, unless the legislature acts to create an alternative plan. Our hope is that our elected representatives in Michigan will recognize the importance of statewide library services and resource sharing that public libraries provide, and how we help our communities with job seeking, information gathering, computer access, and cultural activities.