Community Foundation Grant for New Library Website

I’m excited to announce that the library has received a grant to have a new website designed by Lens Creek Studios, who created the attractive new Meyersdale Area Merchants Association website. We are grateful to the Meyersdale Wind Farm Fund and the Benjamin Bosler Fund of Community Foundation for the Alleghenies for helping to fund this project, as well as our Friends of the Library group.

Our current website at meyersdalelibrary.org is “homemade,” through the efforts of a previous director. It’s functional, and much more attractive and useful than our previous website, but it’s awkward to update, and the Library Lady wastes a lot of time making simple additions and edits. It has “crashed” several times when updates were performed; some functions had to be removed to bring it back online. We’ve been worried that something would eventually go wrong that we couldn’t fix!

A library’s website is its virtual branch, the library’s online face to the community. Through it, people may access electronic resources and library information, search the library catalog, place holds, and renew books. Our website offers links to resources like eBooks, downloadable audiobooks, online magazines, tutor.com, TumbleMath, and the many wonderful resources of the PA POWER Library. It also includes a page with links to a number of local history and genealogical resources. If our website fails, we will lose our ability to provide people with remote access to all these resources. It will limit people’s ability to interact with us.

In this time of COVID-19, this virtual branch has become even more essential. Remote learners and workers, those in quarantine, and those who are currently reluctant to visit the library building have depended on it for access to library materials. In 2020, our summer learning program had to move online because of the pandemic. We’re planning an in-person event this summer, but we will still offer a virtual option for those who prefer it.

Many people depend upon smartphones and tablets to access internet resources, so it’s important for the website to be user-friendly on those devices.

We hope that, when it’s done, our new website will make it even easier for you to find what you need from the library!

The Library Lady