Placing Holds in Plum Creek

Pipestone County Star  - 01-15-2015

Regional libraries are a bit confusing, at least for me.  In the interest of trying to get it straight in my head, I thought some explanation might be in order.  It might help those of you who place holds and might encourage some others to start placing holds!

The Plum Creek Regional Library System is named after, you guessed it, Plum Creek.  Plum Creek flows through several of the nine counties in the system and is the most recognizable literary landmark of the region.  For those of you that haven’t read Laura Ingalls Wilder, she named one of her books On the Banks of Plum Creek, where she and her family had a sod house.  If you haven’t visited the museum in Walnut Grove, I highly recommend it.

As I mentioned, there are nine counties in the system: Cottonwood, Jackson, Lincoln, Lyon, Murray, Nobles, Pipestone, Redwood, and Rock.  In those nine counties, there are 25 public libraries and 10 school libraries included on the system.  That gives Plum Creek patrons access to an immense amount of materials!  Since we are all on the same system, you can check out a book in Wabasso, return it in Pipestone, check out a new book in Pipestone, and return it to Worthington if you were so inclined.  The books would still get to where they needed to go, thanks to our excellent delivery van drivers who drive the books around the entire system, every other day.

With all those patrons, it should be no surprise that books are often checked out.  When a hold is placed on a book, the hold is usually not copy-specific, which means that any copy of that book throughout the ENTIRE system can fill that hold.  In layman’s terms, that means if someone in Jackson puts a hold on the new John Grisham and their copy is checked out, that same book from Pipestone might get selected to fill that hold.  So our copy of the John Grisham book will travel to a Jackson patron and not be on our shelves when someone is looking for it.  If you place a hold, the book will come here to the library and we will call you, or the system will send an email if you have an email address attached to your account, and you will have seven days to pick it up at the desk.

For those of you that enjoy using the Overdrive collection for Ebooks, the system functions similarly.  You can place a hold on an ebook, just as you can on a print book, by clicking on the button on Overdrive that gives you that option.  Then, when the book is available, the system will send you an email letting you know the book is available and you will have 24 hours to pick it up.

Because of this policy, which is a great policy when you think about the access it gives to everyone, I try and make a list of all the new books coming in a month and we keep that list up at the circulation desk to help people know what’s coming.  We are more than willing to place holds on any of the incoming books and Pipestone patrons get first crack at Pipestone books.  Even if our book is in Ivanhoe and there are four other holds waiting, if the fourth hold is a Pipestone patron, they will get our copy of the book before the other three who are waiting.  It’s confusing, I know, but trust me when I say that placing a hold on a new book is an excellent idea!

That’s our region in a nutshell.  We’re one of the mid-sized libraries in the system and we have over 30,000 items in our collection.  Imagine how many Nobles County has, or Redwood County!  And I haven’t even really touched on the fact that we can get books from any library in Minnesota through MnLink, so if it’s not within Plum Creek, if someone in the entire state has it, we can bring it here to Pipestone, just for you.

Winter Weather:  We tend to follow the lead of Pipestone Area Schools.  If the school is closed, we will also be closed.  If the school closes early, we stay open for about a half hour afterwards to make sure all the kids can get picked up.  If the school has a two hour late start, we are not affected and will open at our regular time of 10 AM.

PAFL Update:  Pipestone Area Friends of the Library is looking for members – anyone who is a friend to Meinders Library is welcome to join!  The Friends group works hard to promote the library, raise money for projects, and organize their yearly book sale, in addition to the HUGE amount of support they provide throughout the year.  Call us for the date of the next meeting!

If you have questions or have a book you’d like to reserve or renew, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at (507) 825-6714.  The hours for Meinders Library are Monday through Thursday from 10 AM – 8 PM, and Friday and Saturday from 10 AM – 5 PM.  Meinders Community Library is located at 1401 7^th Street SW, on the south side of the high school.