Starting January 1, 2024 – Rural Polk County residents will be assigned one home library in Polk County to receive access to digital content – Libby, Kanopy and Adventure Passes. We will be the home library for Webster Township.
Other Polk County Libraries have sent out letters and emails discussing the change, so please do not be surprised if you get questions or calls.
The main point to emphasis is that rural Polk Co. patrons can still check out physical materials and use the library space as before. This only impacts their ability to use certain certain resources like Libby, Kanopy or Adventure Pass.
We will need to help library users from Webster Township merge their other library card numbers with their Johnston Public Library number on OverDrive. Assistant Librarians and Librarians are trained on how to do that, so grab one of them to help.
You can use the link below on Altoona PL’s website to enter a patron’s address. The map is color coded to help you determine the home library.
Altoona PL Home Library Map
https://www.altoona-iowa.com/departments/altoona_library/library_service_area.php
We will go through all of our rural residents on January 2nd and assign them to the statistical class: Rural Polk County – Webster or Rural Polk County – Not Webster. Those in Rural Polk County – Not Webster will loose access to Libby, Adventure Pass and Kanopy at JPL.
In the meantime, everyone is in Rural Polk County – Webster. If you make a new card for a library user, please ask them if they live in rural polk county. If yes, use the link above to check their address. If Johnston is their home library library, please select the statistical class Rural Polk Co. – Webster. If they aren’t assigned to Johnston, please select the statistical class Rural Polk Co. – Not Webster.
Heads up – we may get patrons from Webster Township that are frustrated because they used to use another library that had Hoopla or another resource that we do not have. Take their complaint seriously and offer to write their request on the notepad. Let them know that we are continually evaluating our digital resources, and we take patron requests into consideration.
I know this a lot – so please ask me if you have questions.
Molly