STE. GENEVIEVE – After four years and deliberation between the board, commissioners, and patrons the difficult decision has been made to vacate the current Bloomsdale Library location effective January 1, 2023. “After looking at the numbers, we noticed that more residents were picking up their holds over any other service we offered,” Library Director Shawn Long said. “That got me to start looking at how we can be more effective with both our staff and our budget. After discussing options with other libraries, a 24/7 locker made the most sense for our Bloomsdale area.”
Patrons will still be able to call and put books on hold through the main branch in Ste. Genevieve, and they will still be able to pick up those titles in Bloomsdale. They will just need their library card to pick up their items.
“If you’ve ever used an ATM, you can use this machine,” Shawn said. “We had myself, a staff member, and two of our board members check out a locker system in Cape Girardeau and we were all impressed with its abilities. It’s very intuitive and straightforward. It reminded me of a scaled down RedBox.”
Shawn hopes that this will increase usage for the library, while offering the community 24/7 access to their items. The hope is also to bring more awareness to library services throughout the entire county.
“We have an obligation to our community to ensure that we offer library services throughout the county, but at the same time we also have to be good stewards of the money we are allocated,” Shawn stated. “After identifying the costs for keeping the doors open compared to a locker system, this will actually save us money in the long run and offer the community 24/7 access to their materials.”
In the meantime, Bloomsdale will remain open every Wednesday from now until December 14th from 9 am-4:30 pm in preparation for the locker schedule in 2023. “The idea will be to fill it every Wednesday at first, and then hopefully as usage increases we will add more days as needed,” Shawn stated. “The final location is still being identified, but when it is installed we plan on having day events out there to help spread awareness and teach patrons how to use the machine.”
More information will be made available as specifics get finalized and will be shared with the community through the libraries web site and Facebook pages. Residents who have questions or concerns about this new service are encouraged to reach out to the Library Director Shawn Long at shawn.long@sgclib.org or 573-883-3358