Services

The mission of the Western Maryland Regional Library is "to enhance our member libraries' ability to serve their communities" by optimizing our shared services in order to provide the best customer experience.

Our services and resources include:

Delivery of materials

Deliveries are picked up twice daily from WMRL. One delivery goes east to Frederick and the second delivery goes west to Allegany and Garrett counties.

Polaris (ILS)

WMRL supports the shared Polaris integrated library system (ILS) that is used by Allegany County Library System, Ruth Enlow Library, Washington County Free Library, and WMRL to manage acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, and public access to their collections.

Collection Development/ Interlibrary Loan

WMRL provides Large Print books, Non-Fiction books, CD Audiobooks, DVDs, and BluRays discs for each county as part of their collection. Individual and Bulk requests to add materials to their collection can also be done with the Request to Buy form.

Staff Development

WMRL provides Staff Development support for each county through continuing education opportunities and training workshops locally.

Visit the Maryland State Library Agency to find more continuing education opportunities throughout the state or Statewide Training & Events Calendar. Here are additional resources about certification:

Statistical analysis & reporting

WMRL provides and supports reporting tools and resources for each county. These tool include:

Custom web applications with ASP | Tableau Reports | SharePoint Data Hub central repository | SQL Server tools with Integration Services (SSIS) Packages | Microsoft Power Apps

Web Support

We provide web application development and custom application support for our libraries utilizing:

Drupal content management system | Microsoft Power Apps, Power Automate, SharePoint, Teams, Forms, Lists, and Bookings | SQL Server and MySQL | PHP | Adobe Creative Cloud suite

Whilbr

Whilbr (Western Maryland Historic Library) provides primary source material covering some of the history of Allegany, Garrett and Washington Counties.

The Whilbr websites utilize Drupal and ContentDM to view images collections from our libraries, historical societies, and individuals in the three counties. There are photographs, newspaper articles and indexes, rare books and more.