Thursday, April 29, 2004
The North Lima branch will close today.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
LOWELLVILLE -- On its final day of operation, the public library branch in this tiny village was so quiet it resembled a church or, perhaps, a mausoleum.
Between 3 and 4 p.m. Wednesday, Donna Naypaver, and her daughter, Amy, of Poland Township, were the only patrons in the branch.
Upset was the word Naypaver used to express her feelings about the branch's closing. "I'm going to miss it," she said. She added that Amy, now a ninth-grader at Lowellville High School, attended many story hours, reading and craft programs and group activities at the library.
"I know Poland's close, but Poland's so much bigger," Naypaver said, referring to the Poland branch library, which opened 4.7 miles away in 2001.
"It seems like they're pushing us all into the bigger and bigger libraries. I'd rather have the more personal service than the bigger library," she said. The Lowellville branch was convenient and offered more personalized service than larger branches, she added. "We paid our taxes for it. It was a nice little library," but it wasn't open enough hours, she observed.
"I'm kind of sad because I used to walk down," to the Lowellville library, Amy said.
Shortly after 4 p.m., Pam Russo of Poland Township, also made a brief farewell visit to the branch. "I just feel real bad that they're closing a community library. It's just sad to see it go," Russo said.
Russo coordinated a futile petition drive that presented library officials with some 125 signatures in favor of keeping the branch open.
Nestled in the Mahoning River valley behind village hall, the Lowellville branch was divided into two wings -- one for juveniles, the other for adults -- each having a cathedral ceiling and windows that bathed the book stacks and reading tables in sunlight.
On one wall, above a table bearing the library's sole Internet-access computer terminal, was a collection of paintings of historic village landmark buildings. In a loose-leaf binder on another table sat a copy of the library system's Library 2011 strategic plan, which called for closing this and other branches.
The silence of the library was punctuated by an occasional loud whistle from a freight train that could be seen from library windows as it rumbled along the tracks a block away.
Dwindling use
It was apparent that time, population, and usage trends had passed this library by. Even the local schools, which used to be a short walk from the library, passed it by when students moved to a new kindergarten-through-12th-grade school building a mile away at the beginning of last year.
The village senior citizen high-rise also is near the new school, Naypaver noted. If senior citizens could have been bused to the library weekly, and the library could have had more hours of operation, it would have had more patronage, she said.
What was obvious to the casual observer is reflected in library statistics showing circulation plummeted by 53.7 percent at that branch between 1998 and 2003. The primary branch service area population fell from 2,072 in 1990 to 1,952 last year and is projected to drop to 1,845 in 2008, the library administration said.
Staffed by a lone clerk, the 3,000-square-foot, 1969-vintage library was open only three days a week for a weekly total of 21 hours. With an hourly average of only 3.86 visits and 6.53 items circulated, it ranked lowest in hourly visits, hourly circulation and circulation per square foot in the entire 19-branch system.
Lowellville Mayor James Iudiciani has suggested day care or adult or drug education programs as possible new uses for the library building.
Strategic plan
Wednesday's closing of the Lowellville branch as well as today's closing of the North Lima branch, which lost 33 percent of its circulation between 1998 and 2003, was recommended in the seven-year strategic plan adopted last month by trustees of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.
The system's strategic plan calls for having fewer branches with larger collections and longer hours of service.
"The usage was very low at those two libraries. We wished more people had used Lowellville and North Lima libraries," said Janet Loew, library system communications and public relations director. Although the Lowellville school building has about 650 pupils, only 32 children participated in the summer reading program at the library branch there last summer, she said.
"The decisions are difficult ones, but we're responding to the changes in population" and library use patterns, said Carlton Sears, library director.
Book return boxes will remain at the Lowellville and North Lima branches through the end of May. The branches' collections will be redistributed to other branches, with some items likely going to the New Middletown branch, which will soon move to larger quarters, Loew said. Staff will be transferred to other libraries, and there will be no layoffs because of the closings, library officials said.