Charles City Library awarded $9,000 grant to upgrade computers

By Kelly Terpstra, kterpstra@charlescitypress.com

The world’s technological landscape is fast moving and ever-evolving.

For places of learning like the Charles City Public Library, accessing information in the 21st century requires more than just leafing through a hard-cover book or viewing an instructional video.

So Annette Dean, the director at the library, was happy to announce that a $9,000 grant was awarded to the city-owned institution to help upgrade eight of its 11 computer terminals and purchase a power PC.

“The library’s goal is to provide the best service and equipment for our patrons,” said Dean, who was hired as director at the CC Library in September 2018.

Dean said libraries in the state could apply for up to $10,000 in grant funds.

The federally-funded money is tied into the Edge program, in which the State Library purchased membership in 2018 and runs through February 2020.

Edge is a management tool that assists libraries in prioritizing their needs and improving the technological resources they can administer. Goals are then set and plans are instituted to engage community leaders in meaningful discussion about digital inclusion.

“They have libraries go through their entire network in technology. You do an inventory of what services you offer with technology,” said Dean. “It’s just a survey that you do that makes you think critically of each service that you offer and your existing technology.”

New services are launched through technological advancements and benchmarks are then achieved as part of a library’s action plan.

“There was a cost-sharing factor,” Dean said about the new tech. “We did the amount for the equipment and the city paid for installation.”

The grant also paid for audio and video editing software that is now available on the new PC, as well as a touch screen monitor and a trackball mouse for dexterity impaired persons.

The purchases allowed the library to meet four Edge benchmarks, including implementing an equipment replacement plan. Dean said she is working on a larger grant that will soon address the library’s other three computer terminals, which will soon be upgraded.

“Most libraries have a replacement program. Part of the reason they gave us the grant is because we did not have one and our terminals were six or seven years old,” said Dean. “Now we can start all on the same scale and start replacing them every six or seven years.”

The grant was received through the State Library of Iowa, which awarded $350,000 to 58 Iowa public libraries to upgrade technology, with money from the state’s allocation of federal dollars from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Dean said technological advances over the last two decades have changed the reading habits of people who frequent the library. She said digital downloads for audio or e-books are going up at about the same rate as the use of paper or hardcover copies of reading material is decreasing.

“They’re still checking out the same amount of books, they’re just downloading them from our service instead of coming in and checking out the paper book,” she said.

Dean said patrons of the library can choose to download books on the library’s website so they can read them on their digital device, which has become more prevalent over the years than carrying around a physical book. Dean said the decision to choose either method is often based on the ease with which one can access a particular format.

While some users of the library will use the public computers to read a magazine or novel, Dean said many either browse the internet, look for jobs, put together a resume or print important documents or subjects that interest them.

Will hardcover and paperback books become a thing of the past as technology keeps zooming into the future?

Dean doesn’t think so.

“Twenty years down the road I could see more money being put into the digital than the paper. But I think you’ll still always have both,” she said.