Category Archives: Director’s Desk

As soon as parents open the door of the library, their children sprint ahead to the Children’s room, open the door if they can, and are off. I often wonder who is bringing whom. During the school year, the crowds of teens arrive within minutes of the final bell, shoving, jostling, laughing, shouting, and always hungry. They too go straight to their own space, the Teen Room. Adults are a quieter bunch, usually heading upstairs in ones or twos to their favorite spots: a certain computer, a table by the window, a quiet study carrel, or that favorite shelf of mysteries or fiction. Children, teens, and adults – they know that this is their library.

When they come in the door, no one asks how much money they have in their pocket or thinks twice about the color of their skin or their political opinion. This is their library.

Sometimes it is difficult to assess the impact of a place like this – because libraries are a part of our history like schools, churches, post offices, and grocery stores – all the mainstays of American towns everywhere. We tend to take them for granted. On a given day we might not give much thought to children running in the door or may be a little annoyed by the teen’s boisterous entrance. If only we knew their stories, we might have more of a glimpse of what the library means to them.

Recently I got a glimpse into the story of a library child as I read about Maya Angelou’s life after her passing on May 28^th.  Maya had an incredibly varied life, and is best known for her work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. But the voice that gave us challenging works of literature and beautiful poetry did not always speak. As a young child Maya was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend. When she told who it was that hurt her, he was convicted and served only one day before being released. He was found beaten to death the next day. With the logic of a child, Maya believed that her words had killed him, which so frightened her that she stopped speaking altogether. She did not speak for five years, fearing her voice would harm again. During that time she was sent to live with her Grandmother in Arkansas, and it was during this time that Maya discovered the magic of story at the public library. It literally changed her life.

“I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me. So I have a special place for every library, in my heart of hearts.”

I’m sure that as a silent child in the segregated south, it would have been easy for Maya to slip through the cracks. But fortunately for the world, there was a free public library. Cool stacks where she could lay on the floor and read one book after another to her heart’s content. It was there that she fell in love with words and with literature, and it was there she found her voice.

The children in our community are at risk just as Maya was. Statistics tell us that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys are the victims of sexual abuse, and the numbers for physical and emotional abuse are even higher. We are seeing teens with adult size problems – drugs, homelessness, hunger, sexual violence, and pregnancy. The child running to the children’s room and the teen yelling down the hallway may need this place more than we know.

It is my hope that we are, and continue to be the place where our community’s children find their voice, just like Maya did. Who knows, maybe their voices will one day change the world.

Baseball stadiums, Civil War battlefields, wineries, or amusement parks . . . when you take a road trip, what do you tend to visit? What about libraries? Although I generally don’t set out to visit libraries on our trips, I almost always find them. From Washington D.C. to Florida to a small village in Maine, I am drawn to the amazing work libraries do. I’m drawn to their stories, their books, and their architecture. I’m drawn to their staff and the battles they have fought to serve their communities. It doesn’t much matter to me if they greet me with imposing architecture or a humble doorway – they all pull me in. I have been amazed to find that I’m not the only library lover with this admittedly eccentric habit.  Libraries, it seems, have a fan base of their very own.

Robert Dawson is a library lover who has spent nearly 20 years photographing libraries. His amazing work is documented in his new book, The Public Library. This photographic essay is punctuated by his own reflections and by those of authors such as Isaac Asimov, Barbara Kingsolver, Anne Lamott, Dr. Seuss, E.B. White, Amy Tan, and others. I have to admit that I could not wait to get my hands on this book. In its pages I found some old friends – libraries I have visited and libraries I’ve been inspired by. One of the very first libraries in his book is the now demolished Mark Twain Library in Detroit which was the topic of a previous blog post. As Dawson worked on this project, some commented to him that they were glad he was documenting the vanishing American library. He was always quick to say that American libraries today are busy community hubs providing more services than ever before and are far from a vanishing breed.  He sees the role of libraries as leveling the playing field for all Americans and showing the way to something better.

The most moving pictures in Dawson’s book are the lost and abandoned libraries, wavering like ghost towns before time or the wrecking ball takes them. Many of these are in the poorest areas of the country, and the loss of those libraries compounds poverty with an impoverishment of another sort. For a library lover, those are hard photos to view. But behind these photographs battles are being fought – some succeed and others fail, but the tide of support for libraries is rising. Library advocates all over the country are raising money to keep services moving forward and talking with their state legislators about the difference libraries make.  Some libraries are partially funded by donations or private foundations, and a few exceptional libraries are privately funded.  One of those is Southwest Harbor Village Library in Maine – walking into this library on one vacation was an eye-opening experience for me (it is the subject of a previous blog post).  I couldn’t imagine how such a small village could afford such a wonderful library until I learned from their director that their private funding represents an astounding 80% of their budget. Truly a vibrant and well-loved community library.

One of my favorite quotes from The Public Library is in the afterword written by author Ann Patchett:

So know this – if you love your library, use your library. Support libraries in your words and deeds. If you are fortunate enough to be able to buy your books, and you have your own computer with which to conduct research, and you’re not in need of a story hour for your children, then don’t forget about the members of your community who are like you but perhaps lack your resources – the ones who love to read, who long to learn, who need a place to go and sit and think. Make sure that in your good fortune you remember to support their quest for a better life. That’s what a library promises us, after all: a better life.  And that’s what libraries have delivered.                                             – Ann Patchett

And now, just for fun and to celebrate libraries, here are some libraries we’ve visited:

Willard Library in Evansville, Indiana, snapped by GPL Staffer Janet Buckley

A Colorado public library in a tiny town between Silverton and Ouray. Snapped by Ellen Miller.

Southwest Harbor Village Public Library, Maine. 80% privately funded, and much bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside! Snapped by Cheryl Dobbs

Hannibal Public Library, Missouri. Snapped by GPL staffer Karen Jewell.

Nazareth Public Library, Pennsylvania. GPL staffer Lynn Johnson’s hometown library

Caye Caulker Library, Belize. Photographed by Greenwood Realtor and
former Mayor Margaret McGovern

Billings Public Library, Montana. Snapped by Ellen Miller.

The front of Mackinac Island Public Library . . . and the back porch.
Snapped by Cheryl Dobbs.

 And like any vacation, after you have traveled and seen the world, you are always glad to come back home  . . .

. . . how can you expect to know where you’re going?

The first months of 2014 have been an arctic blur of plowing, shoveling, burst pipes, ice melt, and ten years’ worth of snow days. The challenges of this peculiar year have kept us all hopping as we repair building damage from storms and stretch the budget to encompass unexpected expenses. But before we are swept away by the drama of a new year, we want to take a moment to look back, assess 2013, and report to our community on our stewardship of their tax dollars and donations.

Looking back takes a certain amount of discipline in our fast paced culture, but it is incredibly important to purposefully stop, assess progress and failures, and make an honest assessment. How else can we track our progress and assess our trajectory?

This report is the story of your community, and it is the result of your tax dollars, your donations, and your volunteer hours. We wanted you to know that your library, with your help, made a difference.

I hope you’ll read that story here. Print copies of this report are also available in the library.

Sometimes you see things on the internet you wish you had never seen.  And the problem is that once you’ve seen a tragedy, it can’t be unseen. For instance, the sight of an abandoned and rotting American library wasn’t something I ever wanted to see or thought could exist.

Detroit’s Mark Twain Public Library was built in 1939 when the original Carnegie Library was torn down to widen roads. It was built as a regional library, and was the second largest in the Detroit System. It was beautiful. Arched ceilings framed elegant spaces for community gatherings and its lofty architecture made it a favorite destination for the community. Children who grew up walking to the library remembered its vast coolness on summer days, the high-backed leather chairs by the fireplace, and the names of the librarians who made it feel like home. But in 1997, the library was closed in order to repair a long ignored roof leak. They told the community it would be closed for two years. A special millage (tax) was even approved and collected for its repair, and yet it appears that work never began. Oddly, most of the equipment and books were left behind, giving it an eerily apocalyptic look, and the building was boarded up. An annex library was temporarily opened in the basement of a local church, but it was tiny in comparison to its namesake. Unfortunately, the promised two years turned into more than a decade. Finally, portions of the roof actually caved in, and black mold flourished where learning once had. The Mark Twain Public Library was demolished in 2011 for $200,000. No architectural salvage was attempted, and no recycling of materials or fixtures was considered.   Soon, the small annex library was also closed.

The pictures of this American tragedy are not unique in economically depressed Detroit. Many factories, hospitals, theaters, book depositories and other buildings were abandoned as the automobile industry dried up and Detroit’s population plummeted from a high of 1.8 million to 700,000 in only 50 years, leaving tax-supported services scrambling to deal with an outsized and aging infrastructure. In 2013 Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

The uniqueness of Detroit’s situation makes it easy to distance ourselves from this nightmare and helps us believe that it could never happen to us. After all, we don’t have many abandoned buildings. Our city isn’t nearly bankrupt. We certainly want to believe it couldn’t happen here. But there are lessons to be learned, nonetheless.

The leak that swallowed the Mark Twain Library didn’t happen overnight.  If it had been fixed when first discovered, might library have been kept open in 1997? The devil is in the details, and this time the detail was maintenance. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s true that if it wasn’t the roof leak it might have been something else. But the end result of books and equipment left to rot suggests that the details were not and had not been attended to.

So what can we do to avoid a future like this?

• Library and city officials must pay attention to the details. Decay in a city is as destructive as a leak in the library roof. Spend what it takes to fix it now, so that tomorrow it won’t ruin us all.
• Libraries must budget strategically, even when it hurts. We are the stewards of this resource for the future and every decision counts.
• We need to stay involved with our local and state government and be a part of the process. They need to understand why libraries matter and the value we add.
• We need to remember that the “pie” is only so big, and there are many needs. Schools, libraries, and economic development must all succeed. If we sacrifice any one of these for another, our vision for Greenwood will fade away.

In the early months of 2012 we walked through our building trying not to imagine what it would look like for our community if our doors closed. At that time there was a good chance that it would, and the heartbreaking possibility fueled our resolve to change the future. We rolled the budget back to 2006 levels and began again.

I’m so grateful I didn’t come across the photos of the Mark Twain Library until just recently. Even then, they shook me up. It is true that sometimes libraries must close. But losing a resource that enriches, empowers, and educates a community is a tragedy every single time, and the community is always poorer for it.  There is no doubt that funding is an increasing challenge for all tax funded entities. All of us feel our revenue is being chipped away dollar b

y dollar, and that the demand for and cost of our services continues to increase. But unless cities, schools, and libraries see themselves as partners rather than competitors, we will lose the battle for Greenwood. Let’s take the long view, plan for our future together, and learn the lessons of Detroit and of the Mark Twain Library.

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GPL is planning an exhibit later this year with the work of Brandon P. Davis, whose haunting photos of the Mark Twain Library can viewed here. The first picture you saw at the top of this entry is an example of his work.

These are the scariest words on any job description, aren’t they? Over the past several months, Greenwood Library has suffered several weather related water problems throughout the building. We had a minor roof leak, a burst pipe, and flooding from heavy rains in December. The repair of all those areas is in process or scheduled and we can’t wait to have our building 100% back to normal. We are grateful for good insurance but also for a team that rolls with the punches and steps up to give extra when it is needed.

Our Children’s Department has been nearly homeless for these months as their offices and programming rooms have been floored, flooded, and re-floored. Desks and cabinets have been moved multiple times and programs held in alternate locations, often surrounded by relocated filing cabinets and storage bins. Our staff never lost their smiles and worked hard to keep things moving forward.

Did our librarians ever think, while attaining their master’s degrees, that they were going to go out and change the world by moving library furniture? That late night emergencies with wet/dry vacuums would be involved? No, they did not. These are the details of any career that you don’t tend to hear about ahead of time. To the credit of our staff, I’ve never once heard the phrase, “that’s not my job.”

Our staff keeps their eyes on the goal of serving our community, and chomp at the bit to get past these annoyances and back to our regular work. One quote pinned to my bulletin board says “Plans change, vision does not.” It has been a guiding principal for the last two years. Whether the challenge is physical or financial, we keep our eyes on the goal and continue moving forward. And our goal not a perfect library or a perfect building – it is rather a vision of what Greenwood can be:

We see a community unified in its commitment to the success of every citizen. Children are ready to read and succeed in school; teens are mentored for leadership; adults are skilled and ready to be competitive in the workforce. Information and technology are accessible to everyone, and creativity and innovation are valued. It is a community poised to compete in the global marketplace and enthusiastic about the future.

So thank you for your patience in our winter mess and repairs – and a special thank you to employees who have been so helpful in recent days:

• Linda Messick, Head of Children’s Services and her entire staff.
• Janet Buckley, Head of Technical Services and her staff.
• Children’s department pages Tommy Mangan and Ashish Cherian for their strong backs, willing spirits and quick smiles.