Wishes for 2009 and a few New Year's Resolutions...

2008 was a great year for our library. We increased usage and attendance at programs; offered some new programs that patrons really embraced; continued to plan for our future and created new services! 

We would like to thank all of our patrons- without you we wouldn't exist!  We hope that you continue to check out books, DVDs, CDs and audios; download an audiobook if you haven't yet (new iPod compatible books are coming soon); attend a program;  or check out our website.

Our resolutions for 2009 are to continue to offer materials, programs and services that meet the needs and desires of our library patrons. We will add or refine programs and services as needed. We will continue to inform you of the plans for our referendum. Finally, we promise to do our best to respond to any suggestions we receive.

My wish for you and your family is a Happy, Healthy and Blessed New Year filled with books, movies, music and fun!

Thank you to all that participated in the Gingerbread House Auction

I would like to send a huge thank you to all that participated in this year's Gingerbread House Auction.

We had 15 houses to auction off. There were many styles and methods used to create the houses! Pictures will be posted soon on the library's website.

In addition, the Friends group sold 6 baskets through Silent Auction.

The Friends income for this event was close to 900!! Many many thanks to all who helped us achieve this amount!

A special thank you to the Friends of the Library for all you do to assist us! 

We would also like to thank our auctioneer, Mr. Todd Holmes, for helping to make this a special Event! We would like to thank the Wilmington School District for use of the beautiful high school. Another special thank you to Bonnie, the HS janitor, who was incredibly helpful and providing great assistance to us. 

I hope that those of you who won a house or basket are enjoying them~ I know my family's enjoying the two that we won!

We hope to see you next year! 

Holiday help

If you're planning a party, looking for new cookie recipes, or ideas for homemade gifts, stop in @ your library. We have idea books for all of these plus much more. We currently have a display of holiday related books... some of the cookies look really yummy!

If you're looking for unique gifts, please consider entering a bid in our silent auction. We have about 5-6 baskets that are being auctioned off. Bids are being taken through Sunday afternoon. The baskets will be tranported to the high school for the Gingerbread House Auction for the final bids. Basket themes include High School Musical, Hannah Montana, Adventures in Reading, Organizing, and a Gingerbread themed basket. Stop by and check them out soon!

Also join us on Sunday, December 14 for the Friends of the Library's 2nd Annual Gingerbread House Auction. There will be a variety of houses to bid on, yummy snacks to enjoy and great fun to be had by all!

Carry out @ your library

Greetings on this cold November day! I just wanted to remind you about a relatively new service that the library has. We are now offering "Carry out @ your library"! To sum this service up, call us with a list of books, we'll check them out and bag them for you. Then, we'll either carry them out to the curb at a designated time or you can come in and pick up the bag. Give it a try today! This service was made possible with the assistance of the Friends of the Wilmington Library.

Friends Gingerbread House Auction

Greetings everyone on this chilly Saturday afternoon! The Friends of the Library are sponsoring their 2nd Annual Gingerbread House Auction on December 14th at the Wilmington High School. Library staff members are deciding what their house is going to look like.

If you like to create things, please consider putting a house in the auction. There is no cost to participate if you enter something. If you choose to sponsor someone else there is a $50 fee. All monies will benefit the Wilmington Library. Please stop in at the library or visit our website at www.wilmingtonlibrary.org for more information.

If you would like information on becoming a Friend of the Library visit our website and click on the Friends tab.

Senator Dahl Poster

Today we met with Senator Dahl at the library. We presented him with a framed copy of his READ poster. We then presented a copy of the poster to the school district in Senator Dahl's name. We were excited to have the Senator at our library.We were able to give him a tour and he spoke with the staff that were working at the time.

We hope he returns in the future!

Pictured from left to right: Jay Plese, Superintedent Wilmington CUSD 209-U; Mary Soucie, Library Director; Senator Dahl; Jim Reeves, Library Trustee; Matt Swick, Curriculum Coordinator Wilmington CUSD 209-U

Recognizing library staff members

On July 1st, we had a celebration called "Joanne Day". We recognized Joanne Fitzpatrick for her 20 years of service to our library. Joanne has worn many hats while she's been employed here. She is the Technical Services Coordinator. That means she orders the materials, adds them to the computerized catalog and then gets them ready for the shelf. Joanne was recognized by the Library Board at their July Meeting.

Celeste Rudman was also recognized at the July meeting of the Library Board for 10 years of service. Celeste has worked in Youth Services and Circulation. She is currently the Circulation Services Manager. She oversees the Assistants that check items in and out, overdue notices, magazines and the Library Pages, who put the books and other materials back on the shelf.

Mary Hammen was recognized at the October Library Board meeting for 10 years of service. Mary also has worn different hats during her tenure. She too has worked in Youth Services. Mary has also worked in reference. She is currently in the position of Library Assistant. Mary works at the reference desk, assists with programs for adults and she also assists Joanne in the technical services deparment, preparing materials for the shelves and repairing items.

Thank you to all of these ladies for their years of dedication to our patrons and to their colleagues. Our hats are off to you!

New library in the future?

I've been getting a lot of questions from people about the future of the library. The answer is... I'm not sure. The library board is hoping to go to referendum in the Spring of 2010. By next summer we will know what options we are going to ask for feedback on. We are hoping our patrons will participate in this part of our discovery process. The library is for our patrons- all 9,229 of them- and we want to make sure that we will be able to meet your needs as we move forward with this project.

Not sure why we need more space? Stop in and visit us sometime. You might be surprised by all that we have to offer!

Have a great day and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts!

Grant received

The library has received a grant for a little over $25,000. We are very excited about our project and working with our new partners: the VFW, MOM's Cookies, the Garden Club, the Lions Club, 4-H and the Boy Scouts, and Wilmington High School.

We are going to use the Wii to provide bowling tournaments for seniors; we are going to do video messages to the soldiers, and create a community DVD that will have all kinds of information about our great community! 

Watch for more news to follow....

Redesigned newsletter

After a lot of hard work, edits and rewrites, Book Bytes has a new look. Watch for the newsletter to hit your mailbox sometime in the next week. The color is blue now instead of green.

Happy Reading!

Welcome to our library!

Greetings! I'd like to welcome you to the Wilmington Public Library District! Thanks for visiting.My name is Mary J. Soucie and I've been the Library Director since November 2000.We've had a lot of changes in that time. We've increased our collections, added DVDs, music CDs, downloadable books, Playaways (books preloaded onto a player) and increased the audiobooks! We've added computers, WiFi, and color printing and copies. We've rearranged the library several times, trying to maximize the space we have.One thing that I hope has remained constant is our excellent customer service! Our mission statement is the Wilmington Public Library District is committed to providing excellent comprehensive service to its patrons. We really try hard everyday to live up to that mission statement.If I can ever assist you with any library needs, please don't hesitate to let me know. You can call me at 815-476-2834. You can email me at mjsoucie_at_wilmingtonlibrary.org (replace the _at_ with the at sign- displaying my email address like this will help me from getting email spam). You can instant message me too- Yahoo: wplddirector; AIM: wplddirector; Windows messenger: wplddirector_at_hotmail.com (again replace _at_ with the at sign).Stop by our library or visit the library website and "Visit the world @ your library™"