The Baldwin Public Library and the City of Bloomfield Hills. A report on our relationship After the first year of library service. Prepared by Doug Koschik, Director of the Baldwin Public Library.

Since November 15, 2011, the City of Bloomfield Hills has had a contract with the Baldwin Public Library. ln return for the City's payments to the Library, the Baldwin Library provides full services to residents and employees of Bloomfield Hills. People from Bloomfield Hills are allowed to check out materials,

borrow items through interlibrary loan, participate fully in the Library's programs and events, and use Baldwin's subscription databases, like Value Line and the New York Times, both in the Library and from home.

As soon as the Baldwin/Bloomfield Hills contract was signed, the Library returned to full service hours (67 hours per week), which it has maintained ever since. lt also beefed up its expenditures for both programs and the collection, especially electronic materials.

ln the past year, 785 Bloomfield Hills people, from approximately 500 households, have registered for library cards and have checked out a total of 18,189 items. The average number of items they checked out in Fiscal Year  2O11,-12 was 1,322 a month. So far this fiscal year (since July) the number has risen to 1,655 a month.We aim to keep increasing these numbers.

In order to raise awareness of what the Library has to offer, Baldwin sends every City household and business a quarterly newsletter called Books & Beyond, which lists the Library's activities for the coming

three months. ln addition, this past February, Baldwin did a special mailing of postcards to all City residences in order to promote the Library's services.

As Baldwin promised to do a year ago, it installed a book return box and a lending bookshelf at the Bloomfield Hills City Hall in February 2012. ln another attempt to raise the Library's visibility in the community, Baldwin participated in the Bloomfield Hills Public Safety Open House on September 8. We registered people for library cards, answered questions from those in attendance, and talked about the Library's services and programs. We intend to return next year for the same event.

ln an attempt to make Bloomfield Hills students feel welcome at Baldwin and let them know that we are their home library, we have done a lot of outreach to schools. ln late summer, Youth Services hosted a

couple of Saturday programs for first graders, which allowed them to take a tour of the Library, get a Library card, participate in a special story time program, and receive an early reader paperback book as a gift from the Friends of the Library. The Youth Department is in frequent contact with the media specialists at all public and private schools serving Bloomfield Hills. lt forwards program information to them and makes our services available to them; in return it receives homework alerts from the schools.

The schools have also put a link to Baldwin's website on their media center websites.

The Birmingham community was pleased that a number of Bloomfield Hills residents participated in the Books & Bites fundraisers that Baldwin held in fall 2011 and fall 2012. Each fundraiser brought in over $20,000 Last year's money was used to renovate part of the Youth Room. This year's money will allow

us to expand and liven up the Teen Room.

As part of its 2011-13 strategic plan, Baldwin embarked on a review of its physical facilities in 2011. The Birmingham City Commission, which owns and maintains the Library's building, set up a Joint Library Building Committee (JLBC) with the goal of tackling a possible Library renovation or expansion "from the inside out"-i.e., by basing it on public input, benchmarking against other area libraries, and a needs analysis of the Library's various functional areas. As a result, the JLBC held focus groups and a community forum, received comments from Birmingham and contract community residents, visited other libraries, commissioned a study of the literature involving the future of the public library, and hired a library building consultant toer 4,2012" is now on the Library's website at

http://baldwinlib.org/library-building.  or by clicking HERE.  You will find it the right hand column  and it is the fifth item from the top.

The specific link is: http://baldwinlib.org/assets/PDFs/LibraryBoard/Baldwin-Building-Program-Final-Version-December-4-2012.pdf.

You may also find it  by clicking Here. 

The programc calls for an expansion of approximately22%,with thelargest increases occurring in the children's area and study/collaboration rooms. The program also specifies that the building's handicap accessibility must be improved. lf the City Commission gives its approval in February, an RFP incorporating this building program will be issued, requesting architectural services for

the purpose of developing conceptual drawings and cost estimates. The process we have embarked on is a long one. Completion of it remains uncertain and would take, at a minimum, several years. Since the building is owned by the City of Birmingham, it is the City of Birmingham that will need to finance

any work on it, although private fundraising activity for the building will include both Birmingham and the Library's contract communities of Bloomfield Hills, Beverly Hills and Bingham Farms.

ln conclusion, the first year of the Baldwin Library's relationship with the City of Bloomfield Hills has been a success. Approximately a fifth of all Bloomfield Hills residents and a third of all Bloomfield Hills households have registered at the Library during this 12-month period. We aim to move those numbers even higher in the next year by promoting our services more aggressively. We have reached out to the schools serving Bloomfield Hills students and established a close relationship with them in order to provide better services to the youth of the community. We have held two fundraisers to improve the Library's physical presence and are working on a comprehensive expansion and improvement of the facility and its technological infrastructure, which would enhance the Library's ability to serve all ages in the 21't century. As it moves forward on all these fronts, the Baldwin Library is looking forward with pleasure to a continuing close and mutually beneficial relationship with the City of Bloomfield Hills.