For many years, the City of Uniontown has
been the sole municipal support of the Library. It has fallen to the
City residents as well as interested and concerned non-residents in the
greater Uniontown Area to support the Library. The lack of municipal
support on the part of the townships in the Uniontown Area and Laurel
Highlands School Districts has contributed greatly to the recent policy
change. All libraries need sustained municipal support in order to offer
residents timely and valuable services. Although in recent years the
State has begun to support libraries statewide at a higher level, it has
also imposed more stringent operating standards. The 37% decrease in
State support combined with the widespread lack of municipal support has
placed the burden of support back in the hands of the users.
When considering how to bridge the gap in
our operating budget created by the State funding slash, the Board chose
the option that appeared to inconvenience library users the least. We
could have cut hours to some or all departments such as Monday evening
or Saturday hours. We could have cut staff for some departments thereby
decreasing available services. The PA Room represents a long history of
civic-minded sharing on the part of members of our community. In this
time of budget crisis, we ask the users of the Special Collections which
make-up the PA Room to help keep this Collection in good order and
widely available for use by helping to support the Library by getting a
Library card. We have followed the example of other historical record
repositories in the State as well as the suggestion of many of the
researchers who use the materials in the PA Room when deciding on this
course of action.
We also ask that you contact
Governor Rendell, your State Representative and State Senator to
indicate your unhappiness with their lack of support for state
libraries, but more importantly–contact your supervisors and ask for
sustained municipal support on the part of your township.
PLEASE NOTE:
Users must have a library card in order to use the Special Collections
held in the Pennsylvania Room.
We belong to the ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA/Statewide Borrowers Card Program,
which is Pennsylvania's reciprocal lending program. It allows
Pennsylvania residents whose communities support a participating public
library to borrow materials directly (opposed to Interlibrary Loan) from
libraries outside their service areas. Bring your library card and you
can register for one of ours (however, remember that the PA Room is a
non-circulating research collection). Otherwise, we offer a variety of
non-resident membership cards for use in the Pennsylvania Room. Our
non-resident memberships are for families and can be used by everyone
residing in the household. With the exception of the one-day membership,
the six month and one year memberships are for the entire collection and
other services available at the Library.
| One day membership
|
$ 5.00 |
|
Six-month membership |
$20.00 |
| One year membership |
$35.00 |
