Partner Spotlight - Cherry Hill Public Library

by Elise Aiello on Dec 29, 2022

This month, our Partner Spotlight will focus on the Cherry Hill Public Library in New Jersey. We spoke with Suzanne Fox, who handles Marketing and Public Relations for the library, to tell us more about the Cherry Hill Public Library.

Tell us a little bit about the Cherry Hill Public Library

The Cherry Hill Public Library (CHPL) opened in 1958 and is still going strong! CHPL originally opened in an old courtroom by the police station with a collection of 2,000 books. The library moved down the street and reopened in 2005 in a brand new, 75,000 square foot building. Our enormous collection offers more than just books – library patrons can borrow puzzles, American Girl dolls, audiobooks, musical instruments, and much more! We are a municipal library for the town of Cherry Hill, NJ with over 50 staff members.

Tell us something unique/interesting about your library

We are fortunate to have 600 Friends of the Library members support the library. Many Friends members and volunteers help sort donations for three Book Sales a year. The library accepts donations all year – including books, movies, music, puzzles, audiobooks, and musical instruments. We even collect jewelry and accessories for our twice a year Gently Used Jewelry & Accessory Sale

How does being a part of the open source community help CHPLNJ?

Being a part of the Koha open source community allows our library to be a part of a worldwide community where help is at our fingertips. As librarians, we appreciate that any of our questions are problem solved within the community - by people who use the same system. An added bonus is that any improvements other users in the community make are shared. As a vendor, Bywater excels at support and instituting upgrades twice a year, and as needed. Open source software is an economical solution for our library."