Montfort and Allie B Jones Memorial Library offers services to community
Our Montfort & Allie B. Jones Memorial Library serves our community in a multitude of ways. If you have not visited in awhile, the library is full of treasures awaiting us all.
Our library is filled with a variety of resources and services to fit our needs and desires. Do we find ourselves in need of a vacation but cannot afford one or are leery of travel during the pandemic? The library has us covered. Check out a book and allow the story to instantly take us only to the limits of our wildest imaginations. The library offers nonfiction, fiction, young adult, and children’s books among others as well as DVDs, reference, and historical resources, prompting our imaginations to fly us anywhere our minds are willing to travel—in a single moment and free of charge. Additionally, the library maintains the “Special Collection,” available for us to peruse. The “Special Collection” consists of works by authors from the state of Oklahoma, including Bristow area author C.A. Henry’s “Kiamichi Survival” series. The library works diligently to ensure these resources and more remain free and accessible to all in our library for any patron to search, including our historical and genealogical resources.
Interested in history and genealogy locally and abroad? At a time of intensely renewed interest in history and genealogy thanks to DNA technological advancements, our library possesses and maintains the “Genealogy Room” filled with valuable resources and tools to guide you in your research and allow you to freely search and discover at your own pace. Additionally, the library employs a staff member who can aid you in your search as well as local volunteers should you find yourself stuck. In the Genealogy Room, we are free to search through reference books, obituaries, cemetery and funeral home records, the Dawes Rolls, old yearbooks from the 1920s through the present, old phone books, limited Native American information, marriage and death records, binders filled with research findings and resources conducted by local researchers, and the Purdy diary. Also, the library possesses microfilm readers with microfilm rolls of Bristow newspapers from as early as 1904 and census rolls from the 1800s and early 1900s available for viewing at our leisure and with the ability to save clippings digitally or by printing them. In addition to those valuable resources freely available and accessible to us all, the library also provides access to Ancestry through its subscription; although, access to that subscription is limited to the library’s physical location from one of their computers. During non-pandemic times, the local genealogy society meets at the library the first Thursday of each month. The Genealogy Room is a true treasure of the library, benefitting all patrons free of charge.
Want to check availability of a book? Gone are the days of the physical card catalogue; fortunately, the new digital catalogue simplifies and improves access through the library’s website: www.bristowlibrary.okpls.org, which provides additional information and links as well. The library’s website allows us to search available items, request/reserve the items we want to borrow, view weekly videos of “Storytime with Ms. Elsie,” discover additional library services & pricing, find contact information, and more!
Need to send or receive a fax, make copies, or print something? Do you have an 8.5 x 11 inch item or smaller that you need laminated? The library offers those services via its print shop. Pricing varies from ten cents to a dollar per page, depending on the service and whether we supply our own paper.
Require computer or internet access but cannot afford to provide your own? No worries, the library offers those services. Our library provides ten public access computers with the ability to print. Library staff are available to assist with technological problems but do not enter personal information for patrons for privacy protection and fraud prevention reasons. Some patrons even ask for help with their own devices, and library staff assist them. An additional research computer is available in the Genealogy Room for research purposes only.
Have a small or large meeting planned? The library offers small conference rooms and a large conference room available by reservation; however, some restrictions do apply during the pandemic to prevent unnecessary spread from large gatherings.
Because they passionately care about our wellbeing and the library, our dedicated library staff, library board members, and Mayor Rick Pinson are doing their best to maintain our access to the library and its bountiful resources while also prudently, respectfully, and considerately protecting staff and patrons from unnecessarily gathering or spreading the virus to each other while using the library. The library and Mayor Pinson recognized the need for us to access the library without unduly risking anyone’s health, so they opened the library with all its services accessible in additional formats. During the pandemic, we can continue to utilize the library’s website to search and reserve items to borrow, call for curbside service to retrieve items from the library without exposing ourselves or others to the virus, drop off returned items in the out door book drop, utilize Overdrive, Libby, and OPAC to check out and access ebooks, audiobooks, and a few movies from the comfort of our homes, sit in the parking lot and use the library’s 24/7 available wifi (the password is conveniently taped to the glass inside the doors), schedule appointments to physically enter and access the library and all of its services and resources, and continue to reserve conference rooms for small meetings. Furthermore, the library performs extra cleanings, provides hand sanitizing stations, utilizes small plexiglass barriers to prevent contact between staff and patrons, and offers some services in video format via the website and Facebook page: M&AB Jones Memorial Library-Bristow.
Since the library wants to provide continued services while protecting its staff and patrons, the popular weekly children’s program “Storytime with Ms. Elsie” is currently provided via video on the website and Facebook. Ms. Elsie reads, sings, plays musical instruments, performs with puppets and dances with the children, engaging and building a love of reading and storytelling. The library also proactively removed children’s toys and soft furnishings for cleaning to prevent the spread of illness for its youngest patrons and continues to offer other children’s programs virtually. A program of particular interest is “A Year of Picture Books.” The Library Director, Megan Goff, has posted program books on the website in the form of monthly lists of 30 books each. Caregivers are encouraged to read those books with their children and build relationships through reading and pictures.
If all these wonderful services and programs offered by our library and city are not enough, stay tuned for the upcoming summer reading program: “Tails and Tales.” The summer reading program begins the first week of June and runs through the final week of July. Keep checking the website and Facebook page, and check in with Library Director Megan Goff for more information as summer approaches. You can also call the library for more information at 918-367-6562.
Keep reading. Keep researching. Stay safe, and please remember to thank our local library staff, library board, Library Director Megan Goff, and Mayor Rick Pinson for ensuring our free and continued access to the numerous valuable resources, programs, and Genealogy Room resources in our library now and in the future while respectfully and prudently protecting our library staff, patrons, and children during this pandemic and as life returns to normal as it ends.