10/14/2003 BOARD OF LIBRARY TRUSTEES Minutes

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i P $o 657 _ [1 0643 • - Public Ma hp e 508-539-1435 FAX 508-5,319-1 437 Library To: David Burton From; Helene DeFoe Fac: o -477-8687 Pages: 4 Phone:. Date: 10/8/2003 Re: Sandwich Library leaving CLAMS Ccs 0 Urgent 0 For Review 0 Please Comment 0 Please reply El Please.Recycle The Sandwich Library has recently notified CLAMS that they will be leaving the Network on ..duly 1, 2004 to join the Old colony Network. I'm faxing you an article, which appeared in the Sandwich Enterprise announcing their withdrawal. There area number of factual inaccuracies in the article. The decision was presented as primarily a financial decision. If you read the article,the chair of the trustees states that local control was the big issue. The S in CLAMS represents sharing, a concept, which Sandwich has had difficulty with. Last year, they borrowed 18,000 from other CLAMS members bers but lent only 6,000 items in return. For years, they have restricted their bestsellers, videos and DVDs to local request for Sandwich residents only. The membership democratically voted to do away with local request status and voted to standardize fines and loan periods for patron convenience. This was not a decision imposed by the CLAMS staff, but a member driven decision to improve services for all. I'm happy to say that we have,se n an improver rrt'in-how quickly requests are filled without the local restriction. Sandwich was unhappy.with that vote and opted to leave the Network. Ms Vander }� ander I also encourages residents who want to continue to use CLAMS to get a card from a CLAMS library. While it.is true that we have to honor requests for cards from any Massachusetts resident, it seems inappropriate for the chair of their Trustees to suggest this route in,a newspaper article. In other words,get your card next door and use services we arena wiIIing to pay for. The fees structure is based on how much demand you place on t1� system. I unnk r of workstation access-points, size of collections, number of patrons and data,records factorrntc�what each ember m pays. A small library with four workstations and a 15,000 volume collection is not using the same mount of resources as a library with 15 workstations and a 00,000 volume collection, Mr. Connor's comment about some smaller libraries'fees going down while Sandwich's went up is trice but because of the volume of usage_ I would compare the situation to a SUV owner wanting to pay the same cost for fuel as a driver who opts for a gas electric hybrid car. Mashpee's costs this year are just-under 21,000 for 10 workstations, 7,000 cardholders, 35,000 volumes and 113, 200 transactions. For companson, Sandwich was-billed,$33,000 for 15 workstations, 13,000 cardholders, 62,000 volumes and 202,500 transactions. think Sandwich patrons will be greatly inconvenienced by this dedision. I dont think their lost interests were really considered. They will to register and travel to a CLAIMS library.-to continue to use cape