Internet use on the rise at Turner Memorial Library

   PRESQUE ISLE, Maine – A lot of people utilize the Internet at the Mark and Emily Turner Memorial Library in Presque Isle.
In fact, in 2005, 25,017 residents logged on for one reason or another.
   “The Maine State Library calculates this from the annual report they require from all public libraries and publishes it on their Web site,” said library director Sonja Plummer-Morgan, “and our library ranks seventh in the entire state … out of 272 public libraries.”
Plummer-Morgan says the high ranking shows that the library is providing a very “valuable service to the community.”
“Clearly our users are asking for Internet access and they’re using that service and we’re meeting that need,” she said. “From a performance viewpoint, that’s a very good thing.”
The local library has 11 public access computers each with Internet capabilities.
“We’re open on Sundays now, but prior to that, the last day people could use the Internet at the library was Saturday, so we would see an influx of people come in on Monday to log on and surf the Net,” said Plummer-Morgan, noting that Mondays continue to be the library’s heaviest day in terms of Internet usage.
When there are a high number of library patrons hoping to use the Internet, people are limited to 30 minutes.
“If we’re busy, we limit it to make it as fair as possible,” said Plummer-Morgan, “but that doesn’t really meet the needs of our patrons. If you’re doing a tax form, for example, or a résumé, those things take a lot longer than 30 minutes.
“We try to accommodate people as best we can,” she said.
The director said she sees a “big mix of people” utilizing the Internet.
“I think what we see more of is senior citizens that are coming in,” Plummer-Morgan said. “They’re getting more proficient at using and relying on a computer. We have a program where we will train people for one hour to use the computer. We have a staff person who will set up those appointments and work with people one-on-one.”
Plummer-Morgan said the library is in the process of setting up some goals and objectives to move from seventh to sixth in the upcoming year.
“This is particularly exciting since the purpose of our data collection is to recognize and educate the public about the existing value our library brings to the community and to use statistics such as these to determine how we can truly make our library effective, responsive to the informational needs of our community and exceptional in many ways,” she said.
“Our short-term goal is to update the computers that we have and make them faster,” said Plummer-Morgan. “If you have to wait for a computer to load, it makes it difficult to accomplish anything in 30 minutes.”
Plummer-Morgan said the ranking is a useful way to determine how successful the library is in delivering services to the community.
“The ranking of seventh in the state among so many libraries for Internet services is a tangible way to quantify how beneficial library services really are,” she said. “We want to be relevant to what our community needs as far as information, and whether that is electronic or printed, responding to those needs is really what we’re hoping to do.”