When voters passed the Chelsea District Library’s proposed millage increase by a 59-41 percent margin in August, CDL director Bill Harmer was thrilled.
“I would consider that almost a landslide, really, given the fact that we were asking for an increase and the economic climate being the way it is,” Harmer says. Voters approved increasing the millage by 0.32 mills, which will bring in an additional $250,000 annually for the library. The vote was a particularly sweet victory given that CDL’s last big ballot proposal, a bond issue funding construction of the library’s current building, was shot down on its first attempt, in 1999, and passed by just seventy votes in 2004.
The expansive current building–gracefully integrating the CDL’s former facility, the historic McKune House–opened in 2006. Just two years later, CDL won Library Journal’s “Best Small Library” award. The CDL has since significantly raised its profile and broadened its offerings in the community. Harmer says that concerted effort was in part to prepare voters for the millage proposal.
“We worked incredibly hard to engage the community, to get out in the community, to integrate and embed the library into the community in order to demonstrate that we can be relevant in people’s lives,” he says. The library has partnered with Chelsea businesses and organizations including the Purple Rose Theatre, River Gallery, and Chelsea Senior Center.
“They try to involve the community as much as they can, kind of going beyond the typical,” says Chris Martinson, owner of the Chelsea Alehouse, where the library hosts a regular trivia night. “[Harmer] is really invested in bringing cool events to town–not that the library is a building where you get books, but the library is a cultural resource for the entire community.”
Six years ago, the library launched its Midwest Literary Walk, an idea hatched by Harmer and Detroit poet M.L. Liebler. Over the course of an afternoon, attendees stroll through Chelsea to meet authors at various venues. Chelsea Area Chamber of Commerce executive director Bob Pierce, who emphatically supported the millage increase along with his fellow chamber members, says events like the Literary Walk draw visitors from far beyond Chelsea’s borders. “While they’re attending the event, they’re eating in our restaurants and shopping in our stores,” he says. “They’re creating a lifelong customer for our home community.”
CDL has also expanded the range of its collection beyond books. Circulating items include video games, low-vision aids, DVDs, graphic novels and electronic collections of new periodicals and books. A 3-D printer was acquired this summer, thanks to an anonymous $15,000 donation dedicated to creating a “maker space” at the library. The library is also preparing to archive 132 years of Chelsea newspapers (primarily the Chelsea Standard). Library marketing coordinator Patty Roberts says the library constantly aims to engage the community. “The staff is always asking the question: How can we help the community?” she says. “How can we stay relevant?”
Community members point to Harmer as the driving force behind changes at CDL and the successful millage campaign. He says his approach is different from many other library directors’, and “wasn’t anything I learned in library school”: he runs the library as he would a business, actively selling its services to his community rather than sitting back and letting people come to him.
While most libraries have adjusted their offerings over the past decade as technology has changed, Harmer seems especially dedicated to pursuing the next evolutionary step.
“We’re right at the cusp of a revolution in reading right now,” he says. “There’s no way of knowing how it’s going to play out 20 or 30 or 50 years down the road … It’s almost the equivalent of when Gutenberg introduced his press in a way, because the dynamic of reading is changing. So we cannot define ourselves by books. We have to define ourselves by learning.”
Harmer already is looking ahead to the millage renewal in 2019.
“We need to look at that 40 percent that didn’t support the millage and find out why,” he says. “How can we identify any potential disenfranchised groups out there? How can we engage them and bring them into the fold and demonstrate that the library can make a difference? I think that’s going to be a challenge going forward.”
