New Hours at Cranford Public Library

Effective Monday, February 7, the Cranford Public Library will be open to the public on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.  The library’s hours have been curtailed in response to the extremely challenging economic restraints under which the township must operate in 2011.  According to Cranford Public Library Director John Malar, “the library truly regrets having to cut hours.  From my perspective, 2011 is easily the most challenging budget year the township has faced since I started at the library in 1989.  Each township department has been called upon to make sacrifices this year and that must also include the library.  We have tried to minimize the impact on our patrons by not cutting hours severely with respect to any one day.  Most days we’ll open a half hour later and close one hour earlier.  The only major exception is Thursday, when we’ll close at 5:00 p.m. instead of 9:00 p.m.  We picked Thursday because it is our least busy evening.   Hopefully, as the economy improves, the library budget will improve and we will be able to restore some or all of our hours.  In the meantime, we remain committed to giving the best service possible during the hours we are open.  We also want to remind our patrons that there are many library resources available to library card holders even when the library is closed, including interlibrary loan service, the library’s online catalog, which has options for renewing and reserving items, free audiobook and ebook downloads from ListenNJ, the Cranford Archive, and dozens of information-packed reference databases.”  The library Web page, including the resources mentioned above, can be found at cranford.com/library.