Passing the book

You don't need to be quiet in the library.

You're allowed to talk, and laugh, and enjoy yourself.

The cliché of the stern librarian with a finger to her lips, hair pulled back in a bun and a cross look as she shushes you, is one that Jill Mackey and Bonnie Stahla have always wanted to dispel.

"We've worked hard, especially with the kids, to make sure they know they're welcome at the library and they know what the library provides," says Mackey, who steps down at the end of the month as director after 28 years of service to Crook County's libraries.

She will be replaced by long-time colleague Stahla, better known to local kids as "Ms. Bonnie" for the storytime adventures she has taken them on over her 23 years as Youth Services Librarian.

"We still have people walking in the door and shushing their kids, telling them to be quiet, this is a library," Stahla says.

"One of us will usually speak up – quite loudly – and say we don't mind the noise, we just want you to come in and enjoy the library."

It's a trope with a long history, Mackey says – even here. She remembers the public library of her childhood, a two-story building on the corner of the courthouse lot, opposite Old Stoney, and the walk of shame that came with realizing you had a library fine to pay.

"I can remember having to climb those steps and go in at the top level and the librarian's desk was right at the back, and there was a piece of black oilcloth on the floor leading to her desk," she chuckles.

"You had to walk the oilcloth while the wood floor was creaking under your feet, and she's watching you come."

If you ask Stahla and Mackey, it's time for those images to disappear from popular culture. Over the years, they've done their best to make sure everyone knows the library is their friend.

Building Relationships

For Mackey, the library's focus on outreach is the achievement of which she's most proud.

"We're not just sitting here waiting for people to come in the building and check out a book," she says. "We look and see what the needs are in the community."

There was a time, Mackey says, when barely any kids came in for storytime.

"Now, Bonnie goes out and reads to the elementary classes and the daycare and the preschools, and I go out and read at the nursing home and assisted living once a week," she continues.

The library also tries to make sure it has a presence in local events, joining in with things like parades, Halloween trunk-or-treats and, most recently, Country Junkin'.

"It's going out to people rather than expecting them to come to us," Mackey says. It's made a difference to how people perceive and engage with the library, she believes, and is a big factor in this community's steadfast support.

That support has in turn played a significant role in helping the library diversify its offerings. When it comes to choosing how to spend the library's limited budget, it's all about weighing the benefit versus the cost, Mackey says, and sometimes that does mean turning down opportunities.

"When people think libraries, they think books. But libraries are not just books, there are a lot of different needs and we try to stay up on what people want and what they need – not just the computers, but even looking at the physical collection," says Mackey. "How are things changing, where do we need to add money?"

You can't always predict how tastes and needs are going to change, they say, and those changes can sometimes happen overnight.

"Before COVID-19, the CD audio books had been really popular, but all of a sudden they're not. People went digital because they had to and they're not going back, so the budget money we had set aside for CD books is now going into digital," says Mackey.

"It's an ongoing process, all the time, keeping track of what are people reading, what are they wanting and – looking at our small budget – how do we allocate that the best way that we can?"

Often, this is where patrons are able to contribute. Many will donate for specific things, says Stahla, such as for children's books or special projects.

"A lot of our magazine subscriptions are donated by patrons, that's why we're able to have as many as we do, and it's the same thing with the Casper Star-Tribune, the bank has been donating the money for that," says Mackey.

Little Libraries, Big Personalities

Both librarians are proud of the organic way that the three county libraries have grown their own independent personalities over the years, each tailored to the individual community they serve. It's fun to browse the collections, says Mackey, because some trends can be surprisingly hyper-local.

"Most of the books are pretty common between the three libraries, but there are certain things that are not. I'll go to Moorcroft for a Mizushima mystery or Hulett for another series – they know exactly what their patrons want," Mackey says.

Stahla says you can even see those trends developing. From the front desk, she enjoys listening to patrons asking one another what they're reading, sharing recommendations and suggestions.

"There is an exchange, and then this person has talked that person into checking out a new author to them, and then that author goes out in a whirlwind as several people check them out," she says.

It's one of the advantages of working in a small library system, Mackey says: the degree to which you can tailor your collection. In larger systems, there's often a single person ordering all the books, including for the individual branches and the sections within them.

All the Hats

The advantages of a small system go further for the librarians themselves. Rather than focus on a specific task, everyone gets to be involved with every aspect of day-to-day library life, from finding new books and creating reviews, to shelving, checking books out and answering reference questions.

"I guess you could say we wear all the hats," Stahla smiles.

This gives them a chance to deeply engage with the collection, and means they often know exactly what book a patron wants and where to find it. It also makes for a more interesting daily task list, though, of course, everyone has their favorite parts of the job.

"I love going out to the nursing home and assisted care because we read history, and I love doing the cemetery walks in the summer," says Mackey. "I guess it's sharing the stories – I love the stories that are here in the library, and making them accessible to people."

This, she says, is because of her personal fascination with history. Stahla's answer, while similar, is also guided by her own personal interests.

"I love reading to the kids and seeing their eyes light up, and then they're in here wanting the next book or to know what's going to happen," she says.

Transitioning to the directorship will mean giving much of this up, but Stahla plans to continue reading about local history to the fourth grade.

"I'm a hands-on learner, so I bring in pictures of places and things they can experience," she says, laughing as she recalls the year she brought in a cow chip that the kids refused to touch.

There's deep reward for Stahla in watching a kid change their mind about reading. Many of them think it's boring, or that the only books out there are the literary offerings they encounter in school.

Stahla aims to introduce them to worlds of cowboys or dragons or wizards or kids just like themselves, to capture their imaginations. You can see it in their eyes, she says, and it's often the most resistant kid in class who ends up the most passionate reader.

You can see it in adults, too, says Mackey. Sometimes, such as when a patron gives a reading challenge a go and is pushed into a genre outside their comfort zone, you see a new love at the moment it kindles.

Futureproofing the Library

One of Mackey's achievements as director was to help ensure the future of Crook County's system by creating an endowment fund that today sits at around $1 million. She was able to do this thanks to a state program.

"When [the legislature] was feeling more flush, they were able to establish the Library Endowment Challenge. They said to libraries around the state that if we raised X amount of money, they would match it," she says. "It was tiered, so the smaller libraries like us got a three-to-one match. Any money that was raised, they gave us three times that amount."

The challenge came with a maximum. Mackey got to work with fundraisers and donation requests and her efforts were then blessed by a windfall that completed her quarter-million goal.

"We'd got about half of it raised and then we had a bequest that completed the rest, so we have a little over a million-dollar endowment that's invested by the Library Foundation," she says.

"The kicker is that the legislature mandated it had to be invested, it could never be spent. We could only spend the return on it."

Like all investments, that means it's tough to budget for. Returns go up and down, says Mackey, so in some years it can purchase more than in others.

But it's been enough to do good, she says. Most recently, it funded renovations to Moorcroft Library.

"Especially the last few years when the library budgets from the commissioners have been cut way back, it still enabled us to do some things that needed to be done, which we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise," she says.

A Time for Change

As she prepares to retire, Mackey says she will miss the camaraderie with her colleagues, both the ones she's worked closely with in the county and the friends she's made around the state. Yet another advantage of Wyoming's size, she says, is that you can share thoughts and ideas and experiences with a close-knit library family that stretches right across the state.

For the last three months, she's been working to make things as easy as possible for Stahla by creating manuals and guides for all the many tasks she performs on a day-to-day basis.

"Trying to retire, I keep telling people that if I'd known how much work it was going to be, I'd never have done it," she laughs. "You don't really think about how much you're doing, you just do it."

And to think she thought three months together would be plenty, Stahla jokes.

"I've never seen so many spreadsheets in my life," she says.

In the years to come, Stahla says she wants to make sure the library stays as prevalent in the community as it is today – and as relevant to the public's needs.

As for Mackey, she doesn't plan to stay away too long. She'll be back as a volunteer, she says, because the dream job of her childhood didn't disappoint her as an adult.

Libraries have meaning to Mackey, as a place of curiosity and expanding your mind, neatly summed up in the quote she was asked to provide to the Wyoming Library Association upon her retirement:

"Books are my first and favorite memory of the library as a child. However, libraries are not just about books – we provide so much more. I like to think of a library as a living, breathing entity that seeks ways to serve its patrons and communities. It is flexible to change, accepting of all, it is curious – a mirror image of our humanness at its best."