News from the Jennie Stephens Smith Library

New Albany, MS- The following is the calendar of events for July:

July 5    Union County Literacy Council Meeting

July 5    Russell Lamb meeting with students

July 7    Russell Lamb meeting with students

July 15  Life Core Meeting

July 19  Luncheon with Books – New York Times best selling author, Julie Cantrell will review her latest book The Feathered Bone

July 27  Union County Schools

Library News

The summer reading program held at the library in June was a big success this year. 4,869 people went to the library in June and 84 new library cards were issued for the month.

There is a room in the library called the Book Nook, where discarded and donated books can be bought. There are books for all ages, fiction and nonfiction, and paperback and hard back. After a selection is made the person can make payment in the box on the library desk. Funds generated by the sale of these books are very important to the library because of funding cuts. We would like for the Book Nook to generate enough money help purchase new materials for the library.

Effects of State Funding Cuts for Mississippi Libraries

There have been articles In the Tupelo Daily Journal  about how state cuts in funding are affecting the Lee County and Ittawamba County Libraries. The Jennie Stephens Smith Library is only open 5 days a week to cope with funding cuts for 2016. There is now another cut for 2017, which is effective immediately. The Jennie Stephens Smith Library already has the bare minimum staff, which hasn’t had a raise in several years, and does not purchase new materials for the library. To continue to keep the doors open there has got to be an increase in funding from somewhere.

The attachment to this article is the Annual Statistical Tables for the libraries in the state of Mississippi. The groups are by population. Group 2 is the group that compares Union County with other libraries of similar population. Notice that Marshall County is the only county with lower funding from city and county sources than Union County. New Albany and Union County have more going for it than any of the other places in Group 2.