eside Leader The Smith Community Library may be small, but it is finally playing with the big boys of library land. Sheri Neuman joined the library in November and has worked hard to make it an enjoyable place to visit. She is exceptionally happy to announce that the library now has highspeed Internet.
“Having Supernet, that would be the biggest thing,” says Neuman. “The government, at some point, decided that all schools and libraries needed to have highspeed Internet. We are a part of the CAP program (Community Access Point) and we have six Internet computers that visitors can use. We can also take advantage of the Inter-Library Loans program. You can go online and search for books and they come from pretty much everywhere in Alberta. There are over 200 libraries so you can get anything. It’s really cool. You order from home, the books show up here, and I phone people when the books come in. They don’t have to keep checking or anything.”
Thanks to the government, the Smith library is now up to par technologically, but other less advanced changes have been made by Neuman herself. The library has been reordered and reorganized to make it more inviting to people.
“What I’ve done since I got here is kind of clean up the place. The woman that started the library, she loved it dearly, but she couldn’t throw away a piece of paper. It was getting so that you couldn’t walk in here. The kid’s room has seen a lot of progress. It was kind of a nightmare before. We got rid of a lot of books but were getting some cool new ones. I moved the non-fiction downstairs. It used to be the children’s section, but I think the stairs were intimidating for some kids and it was hard to supervise. I actually had somebody come down here today and work today. It was so cool. That hasn’t happened before.”
Having a clean, modern facility is only half the battle. Now it is up to people to make use of it. If the library becomes more popular, it becomes eligible for more funding, which in turn, makes it a better place. When asked if the library is experiencing a healthy stream of visitors, Neuman says that more would be better.
“I would like to see it a lot higher but it’s probably reasonable for the community’s size, I think a lot of people strayed because it wasn’t the easiest place to get around in and not that appealing to come and try to find books. I get a lot of people ordering books through Inter Library Loans and they read a lot. They come in and pick up their books but they don’t do a lot of browsing. I would like people to take a look around because I am trying to get a lot of current stuff in.”
Indeed. New books available at the Smith library include titles by Dean Koontz, Nora Roberts, and John Grisham, just to name a few. Books are available in large print and even foreign languages. Hours of operation are Tues. 1:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Thurs. 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., and Sat. 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Call Sheri at 829-2389 for more information.

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