Presque Isle library hot spot for Net use

PRESQUE ISLE – After almost 100 years in the business, the local library has achieved an important first.

The Mark and Emily Turner Memorial Library made one of the Maine State Library’s top 10 lists for public libraries in 2005, Library Director Sonja Plummer-Morgan confirmed Tuesday.

The Second Street library was listed as No. 7 on the “Users of Electronic Resources Per Year” top 10 list. The ratings are based on statistics from the state’s 272 public libraries. Plummer-Morgan said it’s the first time the local library – established in 1908 – has made one of the lists.

“This is the first year, though our usage statistics for just about everything have been going up steadily,” she said. “We’ve never hit any of the top 10s before, so it’s kind of a big deal.”

That particular top 10 list refers to the number of people who have visited public libraries in order to use electronic resources, such as the public computers for Internet access and the wireless Internet service which can be accessed from personal laptop computers. In 2005, Turner Memorial served 25,017 electronic resource users. The library beat out Camden, Biddeford and Augusta for the seventh spot, and was behind Bangor, Brunswick, Bath, Rockland, Lewiston and Rumford.

“It means a large amount of people rely on us for electronic resources,” Plummer-Morgan said of making the list. “We’re providing a service, according to those statistics, to 25,000 people in one year. That’s a service that they wouldn’t necessarily get otherwise. It speaks to the value of a public library in terms of what we do for our community.”

The library director said visitors use the facility’s 15 public computers for everything from checking their e-mail and running search engines to taking online classes and filing taxes. While there are times when some computers are not in use, Plummer-Morgan said those times are becoming “less and less,” and there is often a waiting period of 30 to 40 minutes before a user can access a computer.

“I don’t think we’re meeting the demand need at this point,” she said.

Officials say they can address the issue with faster computers, so it will take people less time to complete their work. Flat-screen monitors and more computer stations also are in works. Plummer-Morgan said that $3,000 is set aside in the library budget every year for the improvement of electronic resources, though that basically sustains the current level of service. She said the library will rely heavily on private foundations for grant money to fund new equipment.

The hope now, she said, is that the library stays on the list and moves up into sixth place for 2006.

“What I really would like to see happen is the library becoming a leader in technology, where the hardware and software becomes something that you don’t necessarily have at home, something where the presentation would be appealing,” she said. “It’s where we’d like to be and we will be trying to make that happen in small ways continuously.”