Powerful public libraries

I’m writing to let you know that I’m stepping down as executive director of the ImagineIf Library Foundation after five exciting, rewarding years. I’m taking my leave to spend some time with my family before my son enters kindergarten this fall.

My last day will be March 14, and the Foundation Board has already begun the search for my replacement. I’ll be on hand to aid the director transition, and I also look forward to remaining an active library supporter until the day I turn my last page.

This has been the most fulfilling job of my career, and I’m so proud of what this organization has accomplished. I’ve had the privilege to work at the Foundation through many big leaps forward, including launching their first capital campaign and raising more than $800,000 toward our goal, establishing and growing a permanent library endowment, working with library staff to expand donor-funded programs, and making the largest grants to the library in our 32-year history in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

This was all possible because of the Foundation Board, volunteers, and library staff, who are the most supportive, inspiring group of collaborators and leaders. Anyone would be lucky to work with them or for them.

But while I’m immensely proud of what we’ve accomplished together, these milestones are not what actually made this work so fulfilling.

What made it meaningful is what happens at our libraries.

I applied for this job because I thought I’d be supporting an inventive, responsive library that drew regionally and nationally. What I quickly discovered was that I was actually working to support a human-potential accelerator.

I met a kid who proudly told me she loved reading at the library so much that she’d skipped a grade in school, and I also met one who confided she was grateful to have a non-judgmental place to work on her reading skills.

I met a woman who cried as she recounted how the parents she met taking her son to Early Literacy Classes were the first real friends she found in a new town, and parents who cried when they remembered the relief they felt being handed an Early Literacy kit in the NICU and told that reading to their infant daughter was one helpful thing they could do, even when they couldn’t hold her.

I met a man who founded a business from the library’s computers while living in his car. I met a woman who said that if ImagineIF hadn’t been her happy place when she was a teenager, she wouldn’t have survived high school.

I met people for whom the library was a diversion and for whom the library was a lifeline, people learning new skills and people honing long-neglected ones, people making friends and friendless people coming in from the cold.

And I’ve watched my own son and his grandmother leaving every visit to the library with arm loads of books. I thrill a little each time at the abundance he enjoys at ImagineIF- more books than we could ever afford for him, given freely.

The public library offers a banquet in a land of vending machines. It’s one of the few places in our society that holds out the promise that your mind, at every stage of life, is worth feeding. It sets the table with every kind of human thought and experience imaginable and says “come, anyone who’s hungry, eat as much or as little as you like. Take what you need”. Instead of doling out resources in teaspoons, it heaps them on your plate.

The endurance of the public library in America is a testament to what great generosity we’re capable of when we agree that well-nourished minds are as important as bodies, souls, or bank accounts. I did not understand how deeply powerful public libraries are when I started working here, but I do now.

There is plenty of work still to be done on behalf of our libraries. If you’re following the news, you know that recent events have strained the infrastructure that makes this banquet possible, namely, staff, facilities, and funding for operations.

And while private support organizations like the ImagineIF Library Foundation can take a healthy library from good to great, they can’t replace or supplant public funding or ensure that elected and appointed officials exercise good governance and ethical decision making on behalf of our libraries.

But the good news is that the public can. Our libraries belong to us, each of us, all of us. The citizenry is the engine that establishes and maintains public libraries, and the past five years have shown me just how many of you want to see them thrive.

This organization will continue to share ways for supporters like you to stand up for our libraries, whether with your donations, your voice, or your vote. We are lucky to have such outstanding libraries in the Flathead Valley, and together we can ensure they stay that way.

Charlotte Housel is Executive Director of the ImagineIF Library Foundation.