Minutes (Summary) - 20091130 - AOG

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Ms. Munger said because they use election information for verification of residency, it can be broken down by area. She then showed a photo montage of Orange County libraries. Ms. Thompson said the CHPL is in one location, and is relatively new, built in 1994. She said it is a beautiful building, but too small. She said in 2003, Chapel Hill citizens approved a $16.23 million bond referendum to expand this location to 70,000 sq ft. She said the CHPL is the most heavily used library in the state. Mayor Foy said the actual service area for the CHPL encompasses Chapel Hill and Orange County citizens. He said he wanted to acknowledge that since it was part of this discussion. Ms. Munger said the guidelines were developed in 1998; the purpose was to give libraries some guidance as to the minimum level of resources and activities that should be available at libraries, no matter what their size, in order to provide access to information for the people that use the library. She said the main reason people come to the library is for their collections. She said the minimum standard was two books per capita. OCPL is currently at 1.6 books; Chapel Hill is at 3.3 she added. Ms. Munger stated there should be 60 hours of public access per week; the main library in Orange County is open for 64 hours, but will have to cut back to 54 hours when the main library opens in January due to budgetary limitations; the other three branches do not meet the criteria, but Chapel Hill does with 68 hours. Mayor pro tem Ward asked why Chapel Hill was not part of Orange County. Ms. Munger said because they were two distinct and separate library systems. Mayor Foy said these numbers only represent the legal service area, because they know their service area is much larger than 54,000; it distorts the materials per capita because the people that they serve are greater than that number. Mayor pro tem Ward said all taxpayers in Orange County should be part of the per capita number they use. Commissioner Gordon said the figures don't mean much to her, because they know a lot of southern Orange County citizens use the CHPL. She said if they were using the numbers of those that really used the libraries, then you would see what the per capita collections really were. Alderman Gist asked if they had any idea of the percentage of county residents who weren't associated with the University (students, faculty, etc.)that use the University libraries.