Meet Kathy Setter and Tour the Deer Park Library, April 16, 2002.

A Virtual Tour of
The Not So Little Library That Can

Deer Park Public Library on April 16, 2002 during National Library Week

Deer Park is the smallest municipality in Wisconsin to have a public library. At 3,400 square feet, state-of-the-art equipment including high-speed internet access, extensive software and material for the youngest and oldest, the Deer Park Library rivals many suburban Twin Cities branch libraries in size and quality.

A favorable library to population ratio is one to 10,000 people. In eastern Canada the ratio improves to 1 in 5,000. In the Deer Park area the library to population ratio is 1 to 1,000.

A forward thinking community, Deer Park has had dialup internet access 3 years before the L.E. Phillips Memorial Library in Eau Claire. The dialup service has since been replaced by a direct T1 line available on 4 computers in the building. Additionally Deer Park has been connected into West Central Wisconsin's MORE network for some time. In April 2002, library patrons have access to material from 22 other area libraries, expanding to 29 shortly. Some nearby areas on line besides Deer Park include New Richmond, Osceola and Dresser but not Clear Lake or Amery.

The Deer Park Public Library has been in existence for over three decades. The first location was in part of Al's Repair Shop. The second was in the old village hall, the third in the old bank building for about 18 years before today's location in the new building opened in 1999.

Computer Professional Mark McLean of Amery travels to Deer Park because the library has the software he needs and he gets high-speed internet access besides.

Today Mark is doing a search on Monster.com, a job search site. Within an hour he had found a possible employer with a job matching his skills. He made a printout for himself and left feeling elated with some valuable information.

Amber Gust, with 18 month old daughter Rachel Gust, have found other things they are interested in.

The library has material that interests all age groups from items as pictured to the left, to large-print books for people with failing eye sight.

Roberts Family Joe and Millie Roberts relax with free coffee and brownies during the library's observance of National Library Week.

Nearby was a silent auction of various items, just one of many activities that go on throughout the year at the library.

Library Work Station One of the librarian's work stations. Books are scanned in and out, then data is transmitted in real time to the MORE mainframe in Eau Claire.

Deer Park is part of the MORE library network (My Online RE source) so any publication available in West Central Wisconsin's MORE network is available to users of the Deer Park Public Library. In most cases books are delivered in 2 days. And the library has a substantial number of books readily at hand too.

Kathy Setter, Director of the library and resident of the Deer Park area, also works for the Baldwin Public Library on alternate days as well as on the MORE mainframe system that serves Western Wisconsin.

Karen Zemke, a long time assistant to Kathy, helps out. She is also pictured working on a fund raising event elsewhere on this web site.

[Tour the Library - 2003]