Serving the Internet Generation at the Library

Sue Hill, Library Director, was able to take advantage of the Utah State Library’s Professional Development Grants to attend two American Library Association pre-conferences in June at the American Library Association Conference in Anaheim, California. She attended:

"Eating Elephant 2.0 One Bite at a Time: Using the Read- Write Web in Classrooms and Libraries" and "E-Books, E-Kids, E-Flat! Three Trends Schools and Libraries Will Ignore at Their Peril."


Libraries are always in the process of change and even more in the last few years since the use of the Internet and the World Wide Web. I can remember when Brigham City Library was one of the first public libraries to access the Internet and that was before the World Wide Web. Now many of our children are growing up with computers in their home, Internet access and the world at their fingertips.

Our library has been changing in response to our patron needs. We have had a website for several years that connects to our card catalog and many information databases available for our patrons at home and in the library. We now have hundreds of audiobooks that you can download to your computer or MP3 portable player from your home. We have bibliographies to tell our patrons what is new at the library through email or they can be accessed on the web. We have a blog (web journal) where staff can keep you abreast of what is happening in the library.

While our library will still have books to check out and other standards of library service, some of the methods to providing these books will be changing. We are taking many unused reference books off the shelf, if they are current they will be put in the circulating collection. We will be adding to the electronic reference collection we already have over the next few years and less physical books will be added. We will also be adding science e-books that patrons can access from home or school. These e-books will be purchased through an LSTA federal grant made available through the Utah State Library. If these e-books are used successfully, we plan on purchasing more non-fiction e-books and less hard copy titles. Although, hard copy books will be part of our collection in the future.

Sue