Thursday, November 10, 2011
The Evanston Public Library will likely not transition to an autonomous library fund model until 2013, but an agreement with the city will still provide the library board with increased control.
More than a year after the Evanston Public Library Board of Trustees voted to adopt a library fund model to become an autonomous governing body rather than an advisory group, the board endorsed a tentative agreement with the City of Evanston that would keep the library as part of the city until 2013. As recently as two weeks back, the library board planned to switch to the new governance model at the end of 2011. But at the board’s Wednesday night meeting, Evanston City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz proposed an agreement between the two sides that would instead gradually transfer some governing authority to the library board over the course of the next six months. Bobkiewicz said the move was preferable to the board’s original plan because an …
42.048325
-87.680766
Evanston Public Library
1703 Orrington Ave, Evanston, IL
/articles/library-likely-to-delay-shift-to-autonomy-through-agreement-with-city
261757
/locations/5779336
Friday, October 28, 2011
Evanston's south-side storefront library, The Mighty Twig, reported a handful of statistics to tell the their "story of success."
The Evanston Public Library Friend’s experimental storefront library dubbed The Mighty Twig, 900 Chicago Ave., opened just over seven months ago, on March 26. In the Friend’s October newsletter, the group listed statistics that they say “tell The Mighty Twig’s story of success.” According to the Friend’s, through six months the Twig has had 18,017 visitors, 3,481 computer users, 2,591 toddlers at story time, 241 Summer Reading Game players, 509 children check out 6,062 books and a total of 15,297 free books distributed across Evanston. The storefront library was created to fill the void left when the Evanston Public Library’s South Branch closed last February, and is located less than a block south of the previous branch location. Though …
42.03394
-87.679379
The Mighty Twig
900 Chicago Ave, Evanston, IL
/articles/mighty-twig-library-reports-18-000-visitors-in-six-months
1989097
/locations/5687669
Friday, September 2, 2011
The Evanston Public Library Board of Trustees has to decide on a 2012 budget by Sept. 21, but two core issues are making consensus illusive.
The Evanston Public Library Board of Trustees has a lot on its plate. The group just received a proposed strategic plan outlining the library’s core goals through 2014 and is currently operating without a permanent library director (the person who directs staff, manages library services, and advises the board), all while attempting to use its newfound responsibility as a potentially autonomous governing body to create a reasonable 2012 budget that both addresses public concern over scarce neighborhood services and doesn’t raise property taxes too high for residents. How to balance these challenges and in what order to address them were the contentious questions of the divisive, muddled and, at times, heated debate at Wednesday night’s …
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Evanston's autonomous Library Board of Trustees faces new challenges and an altered connection to the city as it plans its fiscal year 2012 budget.
Starting next year, Evanston’s Library Board of Trustees will act as an autonomous governing body after adopting a new library fund model last September. But with self-governance comes new financial and political challenges, the details of which the board discussed and debated at Wednesday night’s board meeting. Amid both fiscal year 2012 and long-term planning processes, the board is remapping its relationship with the city by creating a “memorandum of understanding” between the two entities and determining how the new library fund model will finance capital improvement projects without relying on city-issued bonds. With its newly gained powers the library board can levy a tax as a percentage of the money the city collects from property …
42.048325
-87.680766
Evanston Public Library
1703 Orrington Ave, Evanston, IL
/articles/library-board-doesnt-see-eye-to-eye-in-understanding-with-city
261757
/locations/4631760
Thursday, March 17, 2011
The Evanston Library Board spent Wednesday night's meeting discussing ways to improve Evanston's library system.
It was back to business as usual at the Evanston Library Board of Trustee’s first meeting of the new fiscal year, Wednesday evening. For the past four months, debates over the fate of Evanston’s South Branch Library charged the dialogue at the monthly gatherings. But with the issue resolved and the branch closed, board members turned their eyes towards the extended future. When a motion to fund the staffing and rewiring of a potential South Branch location failed at last month’s Feb. 23 meeting, the board’s logic was that it must refuse any one-time funding sources to better and more responsibly create a long-term blueprint for the future of Evanston’s library system. Wednesday night’s meeting was designated chiefly to laying down the …
42.048325
-87.680766
Evanston Public Library
1703 Orrington Ave, Evanston, IL
/articles/first-step-towards-the-future-for-the-evanston-public-library
261757
/locations/3716309
Thursday, January 20, 2011
At Wednesday's meeting, the library board unanimously voted to accept an undisclosed amount of funding donated to support an interim South Branch.
Evanston’s South Branch Library may have life in it yet. At Wednesday night’s Evanston Library Board of Trustees meeting, the board unanimously voted to accept an undisclosed amount of funding donated by the Evanston Public Library Friends to support an interim South Branch location for the 2011 fiscal year. The motion passed only two months after the board revealed that the South Branch would close, ending its lease at 949 Chicago Avenue after 76 years at that location. During the board’s December meeting, trustees passed a budget insufficient to maintain current service level at the library’s North Branch, let alone fund a new or provisional branch in South or West Evanston. Under the new agreement, the Friends will rent and prepare a …
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
With budget cuts, Evanston may soon have to say farewell to the South Branch of the Evanston Public Library.
With budget deficits looming, the Evanston Library Board is expected to make cuts in the new calendar year. And given the dire financial situation, the board has indicated that Evanston’s South Branch will be the first to go. The Evanston Public Library Friends is trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. EPL Friends, which was created less than a year ago, has already been successful in its efforts to prevent closures and gain funding for the libraries. The group rallied the community to prevent the closings of both the North and South library branches in 2010. EPL Friends President Ellen Newcomer said she believes it’s crucial to the community to maintain both branches. “Library branches are about neighborhoods, they’re about building…
42.034934
-87.679577
Evanston Public Library - South Branch
949 Chicago Ave, Evanston, IL
/articles/epl-friends-fight-to-save-south-branch-library
1453506
/locations/3106353
Friday, November 19, 2010
The South Branch's lease is up at 949 Chicago Ave.
After a 76-year stay at its current location, the Evanston Public Library's South Branch will likely have to close or find a new home, come March 1. The fallout from this news coupled with the search for a potential interim location dominated the conversation at Thursday night's Evanston Library Board of Trustees' meeting, held in the Main Branch's Barbara Friedberg Storytelling Room. "Our lease is up and … we learned about 10 days ago that the landlord has another prospective tenant," said board member Dona Gerson. "It has [been there] a very long time and the community is adjusted to that as a branch library. So I don't want to see it become nothing. I don't want it to just disappear." Gerson introduced the issue, calling for library …
42.048325
-87.680766
Evanston Public Library
1703 Orrington Ave, Evanston, IL
/articles/evanston-public-librarys-south-branch-to-move-or-close-in-march
261757
/locations/2481819
42.034934
-87.679577
Evanston Public Library - South Branch
949 Chicago Ave, Evanston, IL
/articles/evanston-public-librarys-south-branch-to-move-or-close-in-march
1453506
/locations/2481820
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Members of the group Friends of the Evanston Public Library, which has raised money to keep branch libraries open, rejected what they believe is a step backward in library funding.
At a meeting of the library's board of trustees that went on for nearly three hours Wednesday night, community members stressed their support for the library system and urged the board not to back down on efforts to increase funding for the system. The meeting saw the introduction of two new board members, Mildred Harris and Sharon Arceneaux, who were appointed by Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl at Monday's six-hour long city council meeting. Wednesday's library board meeting marked the first one the two freshmen trustees participated in, and it focused heavily on the ordinance proposed at the city council meeting. Discussion of that ordinance was held off until Wednesday's library board meeting. The board of trustees has pushed for a …
cheryl chamberlain
9:28 pm on Sunday, November 6, 2011
Fred, if you take the overall number of 18,017 and divide it by the number of operating days, it averages out to 133.4 people per day -- a very realistic number when you break it down that way. more ›