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™"