The East Ridge Library has a new director.

Daniel M. Powers, a native of Oak Lawn, Illinois, came on board last week and he’s trying to get a feel for our city and how the library can better serve the public.

On Tuesday, the library hosted a program for children which utilized some zoo animals. Powers said he was pleasantly surprised with the turnout. He said about 25 children showed up along with 15 adults. Bringing people to the library for an event of this nature is called “programming.”

“Programming is the future of libraries,” he said Wednesday during an interview at one of the common tables in the library. “I’d like to make the library more of a community place.”

Powers has an undergraduate degree from Northern Illinois University. He holds a Master of Arts Degree from Chicago State University and a Master of Library and Information Science Degree from Dominican University.

He was the Director of Lyons Public Library in Lyons, Illinois for three years, but when politics interfered with him running the library he decided to resign.

“My wife and I decided that we were tired of winters,” he said. “We decided to send some resumes to places in the south. East Ridge was the first to say ‘we would like to work with you.'”

Powers said the Lyons Public Library served a city of 11,000 residents. East Ridge, he said, is a city twice the size of Lyons and the library here is about half the size of the Lyons Public Library. Including Powers, the East Ridge Library has a staff of five. The Lyons library had a staff of 16.

“This library is underutilized,” he said. “I’d like to have some money to make this library better. But funding is always and issue.”

Although he’s been on the job for only a week, he’s already formulating some ideas to improve the library. One of the major shortcomings, Powers said, is that the East Ridge Library does not belong to a consortium of libraries which may be able to share books that our library doesn’t have.

Powers said he intends to explore the idea of partnering with other area libraries to expand the availability of books to East Ridge readers. He said in each of the six libraries in which he has worked, all of them had some sharing agreements with other area libraries. Achieving such an agreement, Powers concedes, may be “an uphill climb.”

“I don’t know if we can work with the Chattanooga Library,” he said. “I don’t know if they allow that. If I could, I would like to get an inter-library loan system going. That this point, I don’t know how possible that is.”

 At or near the top of his list of priorities is to begin discarding books or materials that have become irrelevant _ something called “weeding.”

From his chair at a conference table in the middle of the library, Powers turned and reached for packaged material on a shelf.

“Look, these are ‘books on cassette’ tapes,” he said. “I don’t even know anyone that has a cassette tape player any more. It’s archaic.”

The point being, the East Ridge Library has limited space and should offer books and materials that are more current. Recently, Powers said, he randomly pulled 15 books from the bookshelves of the library. The newest book was published in 2001.

Powers was quick to point out that any “weeding” would have to be carefully done. With no inter-library sharing system, a discarded book that is desired by a member of the library may not be easy to supply. It’s a balancing act.

“You’ve got to be careful, but at the same time we don’t have any more room,” Powers noted.

Powers said he would very much like to explore the idea of purchasing various online research databases that are provided by companies like EBSCOhost. These databases cover a wide array of topics and are supplied on a yearly subscription basis.

After explaining some of the challenges that he will face in his job as director, Powers reflected on the people coming into the library on Tuesday for the “zoo program.”

He said the kids were off looking at books in the children’s section and the adults’ interests were piqued by novels on the bookshelves. Some of the other adults were checking out something on computers that are available for library patrons.

He called this kind of activity “the snowball effect” of having programs in the library.

“I saw that yesterday,” Powers said. “It was a nice couple of hours.

“We’re doing pretty good as a stand alone (library),” he added. “I think we can do a lot better.”