By Staff
The Niles District Library Board of Trustees, at its August meeting, passed the Fiscal Year 2006 budget.  The budget appropriates about $1.1 million for the fiscal year which begins Oct. 1, 2005. 
As with any service organization, personnel costs represented the largest single expense. The library will spend over $680,000 next year on salaries and benefits. The library has 14 full-time employees and 17 part-time employees. 
The second largest expense is for materials, books, magazines, newspapers, DVDs and audiobooks. The library will spend just under $121,000 for these items next year. 
Building related expenses also make up a significant portion of the library's budget.  The library will spend about $54,000 each on utilities, building maintenance and payment on the bond which provided funding for the 1999 addition to the library. 
Board members, as well as library staff, work hard to provide the best possible library service with the money that tax payers provide. 
The following are a few of the newest books at the library.
The Bright Forever by Lee Martin
Katie Mackey is the nine-year-old daughter of the man who owns the glass factory, the town's main employer. One summer evening, she rides her bike to the public library to return some books and never returns. Suspects include Mr. Dees, the lonely and eccentric high school teacher who was tutoring Katie in math, and a construction worker named Raymond, who has befriended Dees and might in fact be blackmailing him. Even Katie's father and teenage brother are not who they seem.
The Canterbury Papers by Judith Koll Healey
The story, set in the early 1200s, is narrated by Princess Alas Capet, a bored and somewhat bitter member of the French nobility, long passed over for both matrimony and higher status. Alas is approached by Queen Eleanor, who asks her to retrieve a secret and highly personal cache of letters hidden in England's Canterbury Cathedral. Eleanor won't explain the importance of the letters, but in return for salvaging them, she promises to divulge family secrets that Alas could use to her advantage.
Sons of Texas by Elmer Kelton
In 1816, the patriarch of the Lewis clan leaves its Tennessee farm to join a group of local adventurers whose plan is to capture Texas wild horses and bring them back to sell. Lewis's 16-year-old son Michael sneaks off and joins them. When the party runs into a Mexican military patrol at the Louisiana border led by the sadistic Lieutenant Rodriguez, Michael's father is murdered along with much of the party, and Michael is left to die on the prairie, but survives and returns home.