SUNDAY HOURS ADDED AT PUBLIC LIBRARY HERE

Patrons of the Cape Girardeau Public Library can now pick up that book they've been wanting to read on Sunday.

The library will start Sunday hours beginning next week.

"Limited service will be provided from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday," library Director Terry Risko said. "No telephone or reader advisory service will be offered; we'll operate with just enough staff to check books in and out."

The Sunday service will continue until April, when it will be evaluated. If the Sunday hours aren't successful, the library will discontinue the service, Assistant Director Bettye Black said. She said the library is absorbing the costs of the added service without any extra funding.

"It actually was an administrative decision the library made," Black said. "We've all worked in other libraries where there were Sunday hours, and we just wanted to experiment with Sundays here in Cape."

Black said she didn't believe the library here had ever offered Sunday hours.

Two library staff people will work Sundays on a voluntary basis, she said. The employees will receive compensatory time that can be used later, she said.

Also, the library's Friday hours have changed. Risko said the library will close an hour earlier, at 5 p.m.

In addition to the Sunday hours, the library hours effective this week are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Black said the libraries she has worked at where Sunday service was offered usually paid for the added cost with a grant from a local resident. Other libraries have received funding from businesses, she said.

Most libraries offer Sunday service in the winter months and don't offer it in the summer months, when people take part in other activities, said Black.

"We're really concentrating on the months when the weather's not so warm and people stay in. It's just another nice way to spend another Sunday afternoon."

It is her feeling, Black said, that the Sunday hours will be used by the public, and thus will be cost-effective.

"I actually think it will probably be slow the first Sunday, but I think there will probably be plenty of people who are anxious for it," she said.

During the week there are people who are busy and can't get to the library, Black said, along with children who put off their homework until the last minute on Sunday. The library might also be used by somebody "who at the last minute realizes they don't have anything else to read and they'd like to get through Sunday night," she said.

Students at Southeast Missouri State University should also use the library on Sundays, Black said.

The library, she said, is used by lots of university students. "But we also get a lot of education students who teach in children's literature, where we have a larger collection than the university does," she said.

The university's library, Kent Library, is open Sunday during the regular semester from 1:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., said Library Director James Zink. Summer hours vary.

Zink said the library has a "fairly decent flow" during mid-Sunday afternoons, but a considerably heavier flow at night.

"I'd also say we have a lot of local people non-student, non-faculty people from the community who come in on Sundays," he said.

The Riverside Regional Library in Jackson and the Jackson Public Library have no Sunday hours.