Welcome to the Wakita County Library.

 

Our Mission:

The Wakita County Library exists to serve the agrarian community of Wakita County.  Due to the mitigating circumstances of poverty and migrant work, Wakita County Library has elected to bring the library to the fields to better serve the population.

 

Our Future

Wakita County Library hopes to expand its fleet by at least 2 bookmobiles in the next 4 years.  Because two of the bookmobiles are coming to the end of there operationl life, it may be necessary to replace them.

 

Our History:

 

The Wakita County Library System was founded in 1878 by John K. Melton.  Melton was a prosperous farmer who wanted to share his wealth.  The first branch was located in the old Farmer’s Trust Cooperative building on Pine Street for over thirty years.  In 1908 under Kansas Statute 1678 where library districts were organized as part of Governor Johnson’s education reforms the library was given a new home on Mason Street.  Statute 1678 required all libraries to have a district headquarters whether they were a single structure or twenty-structure system.  Here the library headquarters existed for sixty-five years until the 1973 Tornado.    Over the years the library expanded from a single structure to five buildings.  Tragically the Tornado of 73’ destroyed all library buildings in Wakita County.   The loss of the buildings was minor compared to the cost in human life, 213 Wakitan’s lost their lives that day.  Three of the dead were library district employees.  They are remembered by the bookmobiles that bear their names “Hiram Jones Memorial Bookmobile”, “Mary Stenhunter Memorial Bookmobile”, and “Clarabell Howard Memorial Children’s Bookmobile”.  The current library garage stands on the site of the headquartes building that was destroyed in 1973.

 

During the rebuilding of the system in late 1973 library director Steven Hamm decided that there was no way to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.  He had long wanted to better serve the rural farm community with better library service.  After extensive research Director Hamm decided that the best way to serve the community was by taking the library to the patrons on demand.   Seizing initiative Mr. Hamm decided to rebuild his system on mobile platforms that would be available 24 hours a day. 

 

Today Wakita County Library operates a fleet of 9 bookmobiles that circulates over 400,000 items to 32,000 patrons yearly.

 

Meet The Bookmobile Fleet:

 

All of the bookmobiles are garaged at the library garage on Mason Street in downtown Wakita.  The only employee that actually conducts daily operations at the garage is the assistant director who serves as the library system dispatcher.  The dispatcher lives in a small apartment attached to the garage.  There is always one bookmobile available for dispatch.  The 8 bookmobiles are staffed by 3 teams each with each bookmobile team pulling a 24 hour shift on with 48 hours off also commonly referred to as fireman style.  The garage has limited boarding facilities so the librarians must share beds and facilities.

 

 

The Heart of the System:

 

 

“Charles Babbage Network Operations Bookmobile” 

 

Named after early British computer pioneer, this unit houses the county's CARL automation system, satellite backbone link to the Internet, phone system, and email system. 

 

The library automation system is currently running CARL IMDS 1.2 on a Tandem S7000 Himalaya Non-Stop Server.  The system was brought up on November 23, 1997 and has experienced no down time since it was originally powered up.  We our currently running NonStop Kernel Release G03.  The system is rather modest by Tandem standards but it has served us well.  Currently it has 2 150mhz MIPS processors with 1 Gb of ram and , 20 Gb of hard disk space.  We recently added a DLT7000 tape unit to allow for faster backups.

 

There is a 2.4 Ghz full duplex link to each mobile library with internet connectivity providing speeds up to 1.5 Mbps.  This system is routing, wirelessly via , back to the main command vehicle, which has satellite connectivity to the MCI WorldCom Sonet Ring through a Cyclades - RM3000i Satellite Router Satellite Internet Terminal.

 

The phone system is a Lucent Technologies S260 series phone system that provides voice and fax mailboxes for all library staff.   It is reaching the end of its operational life advances in Wireless voice over IP communications along with more modern features are limiting its growth.

 

For email we currently run Lotus Notes but we are in the process of migrating to Exchange 5.5 in the next year.  Lotus Notes was running on our last remaining Novell server which we have chosen not to maintain as a operating system in favor of Windows 2000.

 

The Administrative Contingent:

 

“John K. Melton Memorial Headquarters Bookmobile”

 

Named after John K. Melton founder and benefactor of the original Wakita County Library.

 

1. Staffed by the Director, Bookkeeper,  2 Technical Services Librarians, and a Driver.
2. Responsible for all purchasing and cataloging of library materials.
3. Processes over 20,000 items annually.
4. Contains the library boardroom

 

John K Melton Bookmobile

 

The Childrens Services Bookmobile:

 

“Clarabell Howard Memorial Children’s Bookmobile”. 

 

 Named after a Tornado victim.

 

1. Story pit with capacity for 20 children
2. Puppet theater with complete sound system
3. Video projector
4. 20,000 items
5. each library bookmobile has 1 professional librarian who serves as bookmobile manager, 1 driver who is ACE certified in the case of mechanical failures, and 3 staff members.

 

The Remaining Five:

 

Five of the Wakita County Library’s Bookmobiles are near identical. 

1. “Hiram Jones Memorial Bookmobile” named for Hiram Jones Tornado victim.

 

2. “Mary Stenhunter Memorial Bookmobile” named for Mary Stenhunter Tornado victim.

 

3. “Lewis and Clark Memorial Bookmobile” named for the explorers who passed through. Wakita County on there journey west.

 

4. “Davis Howington Memorial Bookmobile” named after the current county commissioner of Wakita County.

 

5. “L. Frank Baum Memorial Bookmobile” named after a man suspected of witchcraft who was lynched in 1846 – tragically, he was posthumously found innocent, and his crimes the elaborate hoax of cruel children.

 

Bookmobiles undergoing weekly ASE safety inspection.

 

These bookmobiles share the following.

 

Each bookmobile has the following:

1. CDROM towers have complete full text of the entire Federal Register, the Federal CFR, all Moody's, Wilson Disc, InfoTrac, and Thomas Register plus internet access to First Search and Silver Platter titles.

 

2. Each bookmobile has 4 public access terminals, plus 4 Citrix WinFrame terminals providing connectivity to the web-based catalog.

 

3. For the visually impaired patrons, a Kurzweil reader and braille screen is available in each vehicle.

 

4. Each library bookmobile has 1 professional librarian who serves as bookmobile manager, 1 driver who is ACE certified in the case of mechanical failures, and 3 staff members.

 

5. Each bookmobile has over 15,000 items, including books, vhs, tapes, cd’s and periodicals.

 

wakita_county_library@yahoo.com