Building Literacy: Public Library Construction
Building Literacy: Public Library Construction
Transformational Impact 3: Changemaker
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In this third episode in the seven-part series on the transformational impact of six new libraries throughout the Commonwealth, our panel of library administrators shares how the new facility has changed their communities, attitudes about the library, and the services they offer.
Welcome to the Building Literacy: Public Library Construction podcast, which is brought to you by the library building specialists at the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. I am Andrea Bono-Bunker, and I'm joined by my colleague Lauren Stara. A befitting end to Lauren's decade long legacy before her retirement, we are bringing you the third of seven bite-sized episodes that capture the transformational impact of six new libraries via the other words of their directors and assistant directors. This episode focuses on how the new library has changed their communities and services to their communities. We welcome our panel of dedicated library administrators from across the Commonwealth who represent urban, suburban, and rural libraries. Thank you for joining us and for sharing your insights. Let's start with introductions.
Lauren Stara:Hi, I'm Lauren. I am the library building consultant for the MBLC. I'm
Celeste Bruno:I'm Celeste Bruno communications director at the MBLC.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:Hi, I'm Mark Makuc. I'm the director of the Monterey library.
Patrick Borezo:Patrick Borezo, director of the Hadley Public Library.
Rachel Breen:I'm Rachel Breen, and I'm the director of the Norwell Public Library.
Barbara Kerr:I'm Barbara Kerr. I'm the director of the Medford Public Library.
Jean Canosa Albano:I'm Jean Canosa Albano, the assistant director at the Springfield City Library.
Hermayne Gordon:My name is Hermayne Gordon, and I'm the director at the Woburn Public Library.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:Thank you all again for joining us. So let's just jump right into today's topic. How has the new library changed your community and or your services to your community? And we'll start off with Mark from Monterey. Well, certainly, I'm going to say again, how small we are. And this is how small we actually are in Monterey, we had a general store and a cafe as well, and both are closed now. There is no other public space in Monterey to me. And so not only the programming, but just the casual meetings, people planning to come over and catch up with their neighbors and friends. And that has been just amazing as far as how that just came about. It was certainly not in the building program or the strategic plan, but that just has organically happened. It's great to see and you know, we have a deck outside and people It's like study rooms. Study rooms and parking, you can never will go out there and just sit and visit. But there's a waterfall out there, and we've had people go out there and just meditate, which is also another new thing for sure. And I'll go back to the parking lots just quickly. We had Wi Fi for many, many years. But it wasn't until we had the parking lot that it was full, and people were using it. I would say of all the things that I wish we had more space, or wish we had this or that, I wish we had more parking, and we went from zero to 10, which was great. But, absolutely, I agree with Lauren, you've been getting a bad rap. There is no substitute for good parking. have enough of it. It's true. And how about for Hadley, Patrick?
Patrick Borezo:So I guess I would say that in a kind of broad sense, I feel like the new construction of the library has sort of moved and raised the stature of the library within the community. And the example that I would give for this is that when we were going through the process of attending all of the board and committee meetings around town to get buy in and support for the project, there were always occasionally voices that were the mortal enemies of the library project, the people that said like, "I don't use the library, I will never use the library. I don't want to pay for this. Why should we pay for this?" And the irony is that because the town was so under-resourced in terms of meeting spaces, there now a lot of boards and committees that routinely meet in the meeting spaces of the library. So now, a lot of those people are actually coming into the library to attend to their, you know, committee business or just to attend a meeting of community interest. So now, nearly everyone has a reason to come into the library in a way that they didn't before. And that I think has really made the library and its spaces a lot more central to people's lives. It sort of touches everyone in some way, shape, or form. I mentioned previously, the spaces for children, and families are coming in. Besides official town business, people are coming in for all sorts of presentations, presentations that we organized as part of library programming, and also things that people come in and say "I would like to put on this presentation. Can I use the large meeting room?" And we're like, "Sure, absolutely." And so we're just seeing all kinds of new uses that, you know, we couldn't necessarily have imagined when we were in the planning phase. And it's really put us on the map in a way that we weren't before.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:How about a Norwell, Rachel?
Rachel Breen:So in terms of services to the community, NPL has definitely been able to increase programming. For example, for the new building, we were pretty limited on what we could offer. Our old meeting space, you know, it was very small and it also housed our audiobook collection. And now with the availability of our new meeting room, our MakerSpace, and our children's studio, we've been able to, you know, greatly increase our outreach initiatives and programming opportunities for our patrons. And, you know, being able to offer much larger and more comfortable programming spaces, we've seen how much patrons were really looking for that increase in programming, as well as the diversity in programming we're now able to offer, you know, such as, we're able to offer Tai Chi classes, yoga classes, baby play group sessions, dinner and a movie, teen crafternoon, video game events, author talks, cooking demonstrations. It's been really wonderful to be able to meet that need that we didn't know, existed before.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:And what I'm hearing in what you're saying there, too, is programming, and this goes back to what you were saying as well, Patrick, is for the use of those spaces and people coming in for reasons that they couldn't have imagined before, strengthening the partnerships with other entities in your communities through that programming, too. Right? Because I'm assuming you're not providing all of the programming in house, you're bringing in other groups to assist with that. And even Barbara, when you were talking in a previous question about ESL and that connection to the community, you know, you are changemakers in terms of strengthening the community and bringing those partnerships to the forefront. Barbara, what have you been seeing in Medford?
Barbara Kerr:We've become a destination, which before we were something you did to pick up your books, but now people can stay there and be comfortable and there's coffee. So a lot of the caretakers who come for children's programming, stay afterwards and socialize. And there's a lot of grandparents who come in with kids, because we have this cafe area so they can stop and have a snack and then go and run around the children's department for an hour, if they need to. And then we are now the destination for teens, which is terrifying and really good. But there's a early release day once a month, and my office is in the front of the building, and there's like a wall of teens that comes down the street and goes in. It's great. It really is great. And they want to be there. It's not like they're forced to be there. That's where they go after school now. And the teen librarians at the end of the day on the early release days are like their hair is sticking up, in their glasses or sideways. But they really, they're enjoying it, too, because this is a generation of teens who are going to have a relationship with books and with the library. And it's really, it really has been good. It's one of the things we always wanted was for people to be able to come and hang out when they do.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:And in addition to that, can we talk a little bit about who runs your cafe?
Barbara Kerr:Someone came to talk to me when we were in the construction phase about having a coffee cart that would be- originally, she said staffed by high school kids, but what it turned out to be later was special needs young adults. The woman who has the business, her daughter is autistic. And she realized during the pandemic that the special needs kids were just home and didn't have a place to go. So I think they have a staff of seven kids. And they love it, too. And they're getting socialization, and they're getting workspace skills, and they've been very successful. And it took a little while to take off, but at this point, they have regular clientele, and people know that there is a coffee place so that they'll come and meet somebody in the cafe area, because you can have a snack. And we have a vending machine. I was worried about them for a while because there wasn't a lot of movement, but now they're doing very well.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:It's just such a great success story. Because oftentimes when you hear about cafes, and it's run by an outside entity, you know, this has multiple factors of growth for the individuals who are running the cafe and then for the community members that are coming in and utilizing that service, too. So growth, education, connection, it's really wonderful. Thank you for talking more about that.
Barbara Kerr:Yup.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:And Jean, what have you seen in Springfield?
Jean Canosa Albano:As far as how the library has changed the community, I'll echo what a lot of my colleagues on this call have already said, but also came to mind that there's a spirit of pride- pride in the library system, that everyone's input was listened to and built into the design of the new building, spirit of pride in their neighborhood that East Forest Park is the home of the branch library that has all the whiz-bang great new features such as Makerspace and meeting rooms and quiet areas and loud areas. Places where people can do all different types of things, including community meetings that we've been talking about. And you know, a pride that they live in a city that values libraries and that values the library system and invests in them. So those are some of the things that we feel like as far as the emotional attachment to the branch, people are really excited to have such a wonderful building and the investment that was made in not just the building but in the people of the neighborhood and people from across the City. They really get a sense of how nice it is, how clean it is, how welcoming it is. And they really just love their library. So we've been able to offer so many different things now that we have the room to do it. And I think we'll talk a little bit about that in the next question.
Lauren Stara:Can I ask you, Jean, just to very quickly tell the story of the tornado and now the library is kind of the bookend to recovery from that?
Andrea Bono-Bunker:It is a wonderful story. Thank you for
Jean Canosa Albano:Yes, thank you, Lauren, for bringing that sharing that. And Hermayne, how about in Woburn? up. There was a tornado that ripped through some of our neighboring towns and right through the East Forest Park neighborhood and some adjacent neighborhoods, as well and was
Hermayne Gordon:Well, I mean, just having this new space that devastating, not just physically but emotionally for people. And the City convened a large number of gatherings for residents and other stakeholders to talk about Recovery and Resiliency. How do we come back? What is this an opportunity to change the way we have things and the number one service that people wanted to see brought back was their neighborhood library. That temporary library that I've been talking about wasn't destroyed, and it kept functioning post-tornado for all kinds of reasons why people turn to libraries post a traumatic natural event like that. But in those listening sessions and conversations, having a real library- and I'm using air quotes, "real library"- was what people most wanted to be an anchor in their neighborhood to have a feeling of home away from home in their neighborhood. we have. When the library was first built in 1879, the population of Woburn was 10,931. I actually looked it up. And now the population is our current population is 41,056, and so we have four times the population we have. And so clearly, we're able to serve more people in the new space. We have a lot of services, we're able to offer now that we couldn't offer in the previous space. just because of the way things were configured. It was impossible. We have an amazing children's room that brings all kinds of people in. There's all kinds of programs, all kinds of activities, steam activities in every area, and a staff that so excited to serve. So you know, that has really expanded and grown. I mean, I have to say, in our previous space, we had amazing staff that did a great job. And they were limited by the space they had. And so now with what we have, we could do so much more. Kudos to them because they did everything, and so now that we have a space to do that in, we're drawing a lot of people in, a lot of families come. And again, we're seeing, because our community's becoming more diverse, we're seeing a lot of those families come, and they're loving it. And that really makes my heart sing. Everyone's coming and really enjoying the space. So yeah, way more services around, just because we're able to offer more services and definitely impactful in the community. And the community feedback is always positive. They're very happy with what's happening here. So we're very grateful to be in this space.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:So you're a place for enrichment and education, but also community connection.
Hermayne Gordon:Absolutely. So now, since we did our last strategic plan, we added hub of the community, which was something you always talked about even before, and I thought, "That should be in there!"
Andrea Bono-Bunker:Yes, we always used that term.
Hermayne Gordon:You always used that term, and I thought, it should be in there.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:A hub is truly the right word for it. Right? No matter if we're emerging from the pandemic or recovering from a natural disaster like Jean's description, or overcoming a stigma produced by a former building that was inaccessible and inflexible, like Patrick was talking about in Hadley, I think all of these stories prove how central libraries are to their communities. I don't think any of us could have predicted some of the circumstances we have encountered over the past decade, but your libraries embody resilience. And one key to resilience is flexibility, which is actually the topic of our fourth installment in this series. Thank you all again for sharing, and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We do hope you'll join us for the next episode. Until then.