BENEFITS
Once upon a time, “SHHH” was the first thing you heard in a library. “I never had a course in Shushing,” reported Janet West, Fuquay-Varina Library’s new manager. Today, not only do librarians talk out load about books and information, but they talk about them with community members in their libraries. And what a treat such talk is!
Ms. West grew up in a small town in western Pennsylvania, and thanks to a basketball scholarship, graduated from the acclaimed University of Pennsylvania. After a few years teaching in early childhood settings, she fell in love with the power of books and reading to transform young people. She and her husband relocated to Chapel Hill for graduate work, she in Library Science and he in Law. Her work as Youth Services Librarian at East Regional Library in Knightdale led to her being Co-Chair of the North Carolina Children’s Book Award Committee.
I have known for decades that spending long days with young children produces a telltale energy born of wonder and imagination. Team sports also teach collaboration. Library Manager West epitomizes both. Energy, wonder, imagination, and teamwork will serve her well as our library grows into a regional center and Fuquay-Varina’s readers will benefit too, as we seek services that larger, modern libraries provide.
BUILDINGS
Adding to the benefits of library visits, Fuquay-Varina readers will now have a stunning new place to visit. We are moving up in the world by late summer—in Wake County’s classification, from a “community library” to a “large community library.” It will double the space for books, computers, interactions, and even parking. The site and building plans already reserve space to double again into a “regional library” at some future time.
A decade ago I interviewed ten architecture faculty members of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). We used these to create thirteen dimensions of the development of architecture expertise so we could assess their program. Ultimately, it takes years of professional work to create inspiring buildings on any of those dimensions. As I looked through that assessment system with our new library building in mind, three inspiring aspects of the design stood out: the social connections it creates, its relation to architectural precedents in the area, and its impact on people who use it.
Connections
First, inspiring designers “discover generative, new connections between social, economic, global, and technological aspects.” My initial reaction to the Judd Parkway location was disappointment that it was not downtown. But in the interview, Ms. West pointed out that the location is right next to the Southern Regional Center and she met recently with its Director, Richard Hayner. They discussed being more aware of each other’s services, like the library’s support for literacy and the ways Social Services helps its clients. This connection surprised me. I had spent a lifetime enamored with academic aspects of libraries. They had transformed my learning through reading, but not through storytelling, computer use instruction, or language enrichment. Those will benefit all of us through the new library’s staff and resources. Clearly, the planners’ wise choice of location produces new social connections.
Precedent
Secondly, inspiring designs “create a harmony of building and land without precedent.” At the corner of Judd and Academy, the land is flat and treeless. But if “land” includes surrounding buildings, then the new library is both “without precedent” and “harmonious.” The precedents are the sprawling, one-story, brick façades of many other Wake County libraries. So, my first glimpse of the huge, building-wide, two-story high, north-facing windows resulted in a startled “Wow! This is beautiful.”
My favorite prior library was the $12 million building that Hebrew Union College built to preserve its collection of a half-million books, often centuries to millennia old. All that light in our Fuquay-Varina’s library will be wonderful for reading, but I worried about the books. I learned that Wake County continues to preserve its book collection, while adding digital content. But the “new norm” in community libraries is not book preservation. Rather, our local libraries now compete with dirt-cheap selections of big box and on-line book sellers by combining their books with harmonious experts and unprecedented light.
Clients
The third SCAD dimension I noticed in the building was its impact on people. To be inspiring, a design must “add value to a client’s desires by helping them re-imagine what they want.” Buildings cannot do this by themselves, but with the right people and resources, they can help.
Youth Opportunities
A recent study showed that school success is the reward of parents who talk with their children using three times the number of words per hour as those whose children have problems in school. All of the library’s story times are designed to include elements of the nationally recognized Every Child Ready to Read program. They use stories, rhymes, games, songs, exploring, creating, and discovery to model behaviors and interactions that parents can use to help their children.
Adult Opportunities
Inspiring “human and client diversity and behavior” does not end with the young. Our library offers an award-winning service called “Express Book Bags.” To test it, I googled “Wake County Library express book bags” and completed the form. Because I was scheduled for a two-week vacation and view the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) as a critical challenge, I asked for fiction or non-fiction books on the topic. In a few days, Adult Librarian Pam Coker emailed me that my bag was ready. On my way to the Art Center’s International Cultural Festival, I stopped in at the desk of the old library. In seconds, my bag was handed over, checked out before I even arrived. In it was a fascinating collection of four books that would have taken me a whole day to find. One of them, AI Superpowers by Kai-Fu Lee (the U.S. educated grandfather of Apple’s Siri and later CEO of Google China) provided innovative solutions. Lee “hopes to see us use AI to focus on what truly makes us human: loving and being loved,” and between the lines, working together, being compassionate, imagining, and transforming ourselves. He even describes how this could work. Thank you, Ms. Coker, for showing a new way that libraries and books can help us with this innovative service.
BOOKS
Developing Your Library Usage
Two more questions completed my interview. One was, “How do people grow in their use of the library?” Ms. West emphasized that the library’s first goal is to serve people. But when we use a service, we often grow, and she identified some key ways. People commonly begin by just wanting to use the computer. Next, readers who love exploring on their own, find what they want or fill our little library’s huge request shelving. Steady library goers make even more use of services, which include finding data as well as books. Some patrons invariably stop by the “Lucky Day Collection,” a shelf of high-demand books with long waiting lists. If you find one on this shelf, there’s no waiting. It’s your lucky day! A pitstop there may spawn a new interest. The most seasoned library users recommend books that Wake County has not yet purchased. To select the right books from all those published each year, the system’s 5 staff members would need to review a book a minute for their entire work year. If you find a book that deserves more readers, google “Wake County Library suggest a purchase” to find the form to suggest it as a great addition to the library shelves.
Last Words
I hope this article encourages you not only to visit the new library, but to interact there with the staff, its programs, and its resources.
My last interview question is always, “What would you like to say to the whole community?” Librarian West answered, “We’re excited about the new facility and hoping that the location change, along with more books, more programs, more parking, and even a few more computers, you’ll come and visit.”
