Library board opts for new service
The Marathon County Library Board on Monday voted 4-3 to recommend to the county board to leave the Wisconsin Valley Library Service (WVLS) and, instead, join the South Central Library System (SCLS) headquartered in Madison next year.
Voting to make the library system switch were library board trustees Sharon Hunter, Jeff Campo, Dino Corvino and Scott Winch. Supervisors Gary Beastrom and Michelle Van Krey, as well as Kari Sweeney, voted against the move. The decision to switch library services now shifts to the county board which has to approve the move with a two thirds vote. Debate on the proposal starts with a public hearing before the county’s Extension, Education and Economic Development Committee.
The vote to change library services, recommended by county library director Ralph Illick, was preceded by a two year study conducted by a Library Service Task Force. Members of the task force were Beastrom, Winch, Hunter, Rebecca Frisch, a former head of the county Conservation, Planning and Zoning, Shannon Schultz, a Department of Public Instruction consultant, and Mark Arend, the retired assistant director of the Winnefox Library System.
The task force recommended on a 3-1 vote to switch for the following reasons:
_ While joining SCLS will be more expensive, these costs will be offset by savings in the county library budget.
_ SCLS has a larger, more specialized staff and a larger collection of materials.
_ SCLS offers better professional development opportunities.
_ SCLS contains more county libraries of equal size to Marathon County, allowing for more collaboration.
Library director Illick said WVLS has been “unresponsive” to the needs of the Marathon County library in his decade working for the county and, with a shift to SCLS, the county library will join an organization with another dozen like-sized libraries.
He complained that Marathon County pays for 40 percent of WVLS staff and services, but does not get needed services, including a quality library cataloguing system. He said WVLS is more geared to smaller, rural northwoods libraries.
“We have different needs, we have a different perspective,” he said.
Illick said there is precedent for the move. Both Portage County and the Wisconsin Rapids library joined SCLS over the past decades for similar reasons.
Supervisor Beastrom, Athens, said that the library’s board’s decision may “look good” in 20 years, but not in the short run. To pay for the more expensive service, the county library will need to shed blue collar workers and technical support staff, he said.
Beastrom said the Marathon County library has served as a central research library for northeastern Wisconsin and, once the county joins SCLS, other upstate rural libraries may suffer.
The supervisor said he did not like spending library budget money outside the county.
“Instead of spending $300,000 with WVLS with that money staying local, we’ll send that money down to Madison,” he said.
Beastrom said he disagreed with making a major change like the one proposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think we’ve lost some of the personal service of the library during the pandemic,” he worried. “This is not the time to do this. I’d rather wait until we are back to normal before we make the switch.”
The supervisor said the current schedule is for director Illick to announce severing ties with WVLS in June or July and joining SCLS in 2022.
The library service switch will likely prove controversial. On Monday, Laurie Olhoff, Wausau, submitted a petition to the county library board signed by 600 citizens, including five current and former county supervisors, opposing leaving WVLS. Dominic Frandrop, director of the Antigo library, also on the same day submitted a petition signed by 147 librarians all across northern Wisconsin in opposition to Marathon County leaving WVLS.
