This week I had the chance to go to a brand-new public library in a very small town some distance from here. What I found was a beautiful little slice of small-town life. The names are omitted to avoid violating anyone's privacy, but this is all true.

The Do-It-Yourself Library


A few days ago I learned that a very small town in our region had started its own library. They were looking for book donations. It so happened that we had some surplus books around here that we needed to get rid of. So I decided to put some together and take them there. Besides, I wanted to see this new library for myself. I filled several boxes with hardcover fiction, romance paperbacks, thrillers, some odds and ends of nonfiction, and an early 1980s World Book encyclopedia that we had recently discarded.

The town was located over thirty miles’ drive away. There’s no direct route to get there; you have to use three different highways. All in all it took close to an hour’s drive. I did this on Monday afternoon. Since it was sort of official business, I decided I could get away with doing it on work time.

It was two-lane road all the way. I drove beneath overcast skies, past patches of timber and stretches of green crops and pasture. The road led through several communities that barely qualified as wide spots in the road. This town I was heading toward is very isolated, a farming settlement of less than seven hundred souls.

As I covered the last few miles, I saw deep blue-grey clouds in the sky ahead. Suddenly there was water on the road. A shower had just passed through. I was now heading right toward it. Would I reach my destination before hitting rain? I did.

The highway going into town has a little street that parallels it from the city limits on in. There are no houses between the highway and the street, just a grassy median lined with trees. It looks oddly like a boulevard in a ritzy neighborhood. The houses are much more modest, of course. They are mostly small and rather old, and not a few of them look run-down. Here and there one sees a somewhat fancier place, built in the first half of the twentieth century when some of the larger landowners prospered. The main color was the green of the yards and the fields that one could just see past the nearby edge of town. The green looked very green indeed under the overcast sky.

I saw two or three small churches as well. The largest of them had a kind of box the size of a small shed sitting on top of the building over the main entrance. I suppose it was meant to be a steeple tower, except it had no steeple.

The highway crossed a set of railroad tracks. Along this section I spotted two old brick mercantile buildings. One was deserted; the other now serves as a laundry. Past the tracks the highway intersected with another route running at right angles to it. Several newer (relatively speaking) businesses straggled along it. Some were still open. One was a convenience store/eating establishment. A flashing light-up signboard outside had a small, barely-legible, hand-lettered sign that announced that it was now open for business. I suppose they must have lost most of the signboard’s store-bought letters. Since it was not night I did not get to see whether the lights still worked. I stopped and asked directions here.

It seems that the new library was only a block or so off the main drag. The library was once the city hall. The new city hall sits right beside it. It is essentially the big metal garage for the town’s volunteer fire department, with a couple of offices on the side. When I got there I found the place deserted. It seems that, unlike our library, they closed for Columbus Day. That whole trip had been for nothing! Dejected, I turned around and headed home.

So on Wednesday I came back, determined to deliver those books and see the new library. This time I had a nice sunny sky above as I drove the thirty-odd miles to my destination. This time when I reached city hall I saw a police car and a large white pickup outside.

I parked my car in front of the little cinder-block library and walked inside through the screen door. I found myself in a room about twenty feet square, with two tables and a few chairs. Elderly ladies occupied two of the chairs. They were the volunteers who keep the library open four hours each weekday afternoon.

Bookcases, most of them newly built of fresh lumber, lined most of the walls. The bookcases contained hundreds of books, mostly older hardcover fiction. One case contained nonfiction, including a World Book set that looked to be a few years older than the one I had brought. On a few shelves they had books for younger readers. There were multiple copies of some titles. Perhaps these were book fair leftovers, or remainders from a bookstore somewhere? I didn’t think to ask. I introduced myself to the ladies and told them why I had come. They helped me carry the boxes of books inside. We visited for a few minutes. There were two smaller rooms to the side. These had not yet been made presentable, so I did not see them.

I asked if the mayor was in. They said that the white pickup at the city hall next door was his. I walked over and stepped inside. The young woman at the desk told me that the mayor was in his office. He heard me coming in and called me on back.

He’s a middle-aged man, rather heavyset, friendly and outgoing and obviously not a career politician—a typical small-town mayor. Although I had already just seen the library, he wanted to give me the grand tour. So we walked back to the library. As we passed the police car he noted that it was currently out of service with mechanical trouble. As mayor and almost the only municipal employee, he had to oversee everything—getting the police car repaired, taking care of the fire engines, fixing the streets, making sure the city’s tap water kept running, etc. And of course he took care of the library.

It had started, he told me, with a spin rack in the city hall building. Local readers would donate books to share around. People kept bringing more books, so they got a bookcase. Then they got another one. They reached a point where they no longer had room for all the books. Then they decided to put the old city hall to work as an actual library. It was the first in the town’s 105-year history.

The town painted the place, hung new lights, and got furniture. A local man built the bookcases. The whole project cost about $300. Someone also donated a public access computer, which had not yet been installed when I visited.

They had several public computers at the community center, the mayor told me. The local children liked using them. That was all well and good, but he wanted to encourage them to actually read as well. They had several plans along those lines—story times, literacy classes, anything they could fit into the space and find the resources to put on. He was full of ideas, and obviously very enthusiastic.

In addition to making the old building a library, they were also going to use it as a little museum. In part this was because having “museum” in an institution’s title qualified it for more grants (the mayor may not be a lifelong politician, but he has been around long enough to know how things work). On one stretch of wall they had photographs of the town in its infancy, a century ago. Elsewhere hung several photos of the town’s experience of the great flood of 1927. I noticed a set of very antique-looking colored bottles on top of one bookcase, but didn’t think to ask about them.

The mayor had told the county librarian sixteen miles away about their new facility. He had hoped to get some advice about starting one. This librarian—a good traditional librarian in her own way, but not the most forward-looking person in the business—did not really have any to offer. I did not have a great deal of advice off the top of my head either. It’s not as though I’ve ever helped to start a library from scratch before. I made a few suggestions and promised to send contact information for the state library’s extension service, which has helped us out a great deal in the past. They have a lot more expertise to draw on there. I also said I’d get them a library supply catalog. I might even be able to order some items for them, using our discount with our supplier.

We chatted for a while about the importance of libraries, about how small towns that want to hold onto their population are better off trying to improve their civic services to attract new people, rather than pinching pennies and fatalistically watching their community slowly die. I brought up the idea of a library consortium. By becoming a branch of a larger system, a little town’s library could gain access to support it would not otherwise have. The bigger library would benefit too, by broadening its outreach. We threw some pretty big ideas around that tiny building that afternoon. It helped me to be part of that. When you spend most of your days taking care of mundane administration and personnel management and assorted maintenance projects, it can get a bit dreary sometimes. It’s good to be able to talk with someone about exciting plans and ideas for a change.

At length I realized that it was a quarter to five and I had stayed longer than I had intended. I excused myself and said I had to get home to church that evening. The mayor said he had to do the same. We shook hands, promised to stay in touch, and then I left.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. It’s encouraging to see a tiny, isolated, not terribly wealthy community show the sort of energy and leadership and initiative it takes to do something new for itself. Initiative like that deserves to succeed, deserves to be rewarded with assistance. I can’t offer a lot, being only a small-town librarian myself. But I made up my mind that day to give whatever I could. They deserve it, and more.