After years of budget cuts and compromise, Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library is only a step away from implementing Sunday hours.

During a board of trustees meeting Tuesday, board President Constance A. Holberg said library Director Barbara J. Wheeler will hire temporary workers for three months if a trial period is approved by the Civil Service Commission.

“Barbara came up with this really great idea that if they were willing to pay overtime, then why don’t we just have temporary employees?” Mrs. Holberg said.

Temporary employees can be hired for three-month periods, which is how long the trial would take place. Mrs. Holberg said it ideally would run from September through November.

The City Council has approved the plan.

Commission members will meet Tuesday, when a decision about Sunday hours could be made.

She said the main hurdle was getting full-time employees who belong to the city employees’ union to work a part-time day.

If the trial is approved, door count and circulation will be measured to see whether the additional hours are worth the extra money to open the library permanently on Sundays.

“Right now, we’re just trying to work out the logistics,” Mrs. Holberg said.

The library is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

An additional discussion item at the meeting was about the library removing fees for all DVDs. Previously, the library charged $1 to check out a noneducational DVD.

“The trustees appealed that we shouldn’t be competing with Redbox and Blockbuster,” Mrs. Holberg said. “We aren’t in the rental business.”

She said it is not unusual for libraries to charge for items such as DVDs because if one gets scratched or lost, it has to be replaced.

Ms. Wheeler said the library has been charging for DVDs as long as there has been a section for them.

“We had no DVD collection and we had no money to buy it,” she said. “We must have gotten a grant for it. As soon as we got them, we charged for them because we had to turn the money around and buy more.”

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