Are you one of those readers who like to open a biography in the middle, to get to the good stuff? You don’t care what Napoleon or Catherine the Great did in diapers?
This one’s for you.
This year marks the 25th birthday of Capital Area District Libraries, or CADL. Going by the book, the system’s official biography should start in 1998, with a list of the budgetary and public service benefits of bringing 13 libraries into a single system serving 23 cities, towns and villages in Ingham County, funded by a countywide millage.
Ha! You’re already peeking at the middle. Fine.
In December 2013, a catastrophic ice storm left much of the Lansing area without power, some of it for as long as 11 days.
In calmer times, CADL’s wide range of services, from books and electronic resources to adult classes, story times, tech help and on and on, often go unappreciated. The ice storm threw the incalculable value of a public safe space, in good times and bad, into quick and sharp relief.
The story has played out in cities and towns across the nation, as libraries keep the lights on and shelter a beleaguered public after hurricanes, civil unrest or other disruptions.
Looking for a quieter moment? Flip ahead a few more pages. In 2017, CADL’s downtown branch completed a major renovation, informed partly by the ice storm crush, that opened up the first and second floors and left plenty of space for people to gather — just in time for a global pandemic to hit.
Now the library was too quiet, but the system adapted, as it always has. In spring 2020, with the world and the nation shut down, CADL doubled down on its online services, from eBooks to virtual cooking classes to streaming movies and music and something about a live llama. Many of these things, including the llama, caught on and are still going strong, post-pandemic.
What about now? There may no longer be such a thing as a normal time, but there are strong signals that CADL has found a fresh balance in its 25th year. After notching over a million visits in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, the system has recovered from the pandemic shutdown, logging more than 675,000 visits in 2022. Circulation in 2022 hit 2.1 million checkouts, twice as much as its first full year of 1998. Electronic media offerings like ebooks and streaming music and movies are expanding by the week. CDs and DVDs, a mainstay of library use for 20 years, are petering out, but, surprisingly, old-fashioned books still make up about half of the library’s circulation — 1.1 million checkouts — and the demand for them is holding steady. Overall, CADL executive director Scott Duimstra said the statistics put CADL in the state’s top five among library systems that serve a population of 50,000 or more.
For much of the 20th century, libraries were primarily repositories for books. That was already changing quickly when CADL was formed in 1997.
By the time Jessica Trotter came on board in 2017 as a collection development specialist, the library still had a huge stockpile of books on cassette.
Trotter’s office in the downtown branch is right next to the second-floor space where she watched movies and enjoyed story time as a kid.
In 2020, the Michigan Library Association named Trotter Public Librarian of the Year. Her voracious appetite for books helps her curate the adult fiction, audiobook and e-book collection for the entire system.
Some of the books she fell in love with as a kid were still on the shelves when she came to the library. (She bought one of her old favorites, about Robin Hood, when the library put it up for sale at the Book Burrow downstairs.)
She pointed to a shelf that once groaned with dozens of VHS tapes of the cult TV soap opera “Dark Shadows.” (The show hadn’t yet been released on DVD.)
“Prior to the pandemic, this branch was the single largest loaner of books on CD,” Trotter said. “People would walk out with stacks of DVDs and CDs. Now people have figured out streaming, and the online services we offer.”
Among the streaming services now available to CADL cardholders are hoopla (audio books, comic books, e-books, movies, music and TV), Libby (ebooks and audiobooks), OverDrive (3,000 magazine titles) and Kanopy (thousands of movies).
“Books on CD have dropped off and probably will never, ever come back,” Trotter said. “Now I’m spending a whole lot of money on audiobooks for download. There’s lots of demand. The shift in just four years has been very dramatic.”
Nevertheless, Trotter confidently asserted that books are still going to be around in another 25 years. Demand in one area — large-print books — is even increasing. CADL’s 2023 budget allots $568,000 for print books and $409,000 for eBooks.
“People specifically ask for books,” Trotter said. “They’ll tell me, ‘I prefer the feel of it. I don’t want to be on a screen all day.’”
She feels the same way. When CADL hosted its first big author visit since the pandemic, with bestselling “Booked” author Kwame Alexander, she showed up with three books in her purse. And a Kindle reader.
“I like both and I use both,” she said. “But I read better with a physical book and there’s a solid group of people who feel that way.”
On a sunny afternoon in mid-April, librarian and llama whisperer Cassie Veselovsky was busy unpacking boxes at CADL’s Foster Library, on Lansing’s east side, to get ready for the library’s reopening this week after a month-long hiatus.
Veselovsky has been with CADL since 2001, shortly after the system was formed.
“Harry Potter was really big,” she recalled. “We had many copies of every volume, and they were going out all the time.”
The basement-level space tucked into the Foster Community Center smelled of new carpet and fresh paint. The tiny yet heavily used library was re-furbished, cleaned and redesigned with new shelving to fit in more materials. On the center’s second floor, two new computer labs host dozens of kids who come after school for classes or computer time.
Next in line for renovation is CADL’s Mason branch, which goes into “limited service” mode on Saturday (April 29).
Veselovsky does hundreds of programs every year, in all three Lansing libraries, from gingerbread house construction to yarn doll making. She also visits area schools up to five times a week to do story times and other programs.
Nearly 20 years ago, she pioneered one of CADL’s most enduring programs — Minecraft night. Duimstra said it’s still one of the system’s most popular programs.
“Their parents don’t want them to play on the internet, because they don’t know who they’re playing with,” Veselovsky said. “But we provide a safe environment and a server where nobody outside the room can join in.”
One of Veselovsky’s more inspired ideas is “Llamas in the Library” — a pair of live llamas wearing costumes from Anna Dewdney’s “Llama Llama” children’s books.
Veselovsky worked with Corky DuBois of Emerald Glen Farm in Lake Odessa to bring the soft, friendly quadrupeds within petting reach of amazed kids and their parents.
Last spring, dozens of adults and kids swarmed the Capitol Avenue plaza in front of the downtown library as passing motorists honked and yelled “llama!” The quadrupeds returned for a holiday program in December.
The day we talked, Veselovsky was fresh from story-time sessions with 14 kids downtown and 24 at the Foster branch.
Storytime has been a constant since the system formed in 1997, at every branch in the system. In 2022, the staff noted a sharp uptick in young parents bringing their kids to baby or toddler storytime, including a lot of unfamiliar, post-pandemic faces. Many of the parents said they remembered going to storytime as kids.
Duimstra calls it a “sticky moment” with the community.
“That’s not because it’s gross, like the kids are smearing food or anything, but because it builds repeated visits,” he explained.
Library districts of various sizes are now well established in Michigan, from Kent District Library, a network of 20 libraries centering on Grand Rapids, to Ann Arbor District Library’s five branches.
The clear benefit of putting a library system on a firm financial footing, independent from the ups and downs of school or city budgets, and consolidating materials and services, has only increased in the era of digital streaming and eBooks.
“It’s worked well, not only for the viability of the library system, but also for the services we’re able to provide,” Duimsta said.
Judging by countywide support of CADL, the past quarter century has been one long “sticky moment.” County voters have approved every operational millage renewal and increase since the system was created in 1997, often by a wide margin. Since 2006, the millage has stood at (or close to) $1.56 for every thousand dollars of assessed property value.
The pre-pandemic year of 2019 was a high point. For the first time in its history, CADL topped a million visits and offered so many programs and services that the Library of Michigan bestowed the State Librarian’s Excellence Award upon the system for superior customer service.
For Duimstra and his staff, just letting the public know what it’s getting for its money has been a consistent challenge.
He still finds that many patrons have no idea of the hundreds of items offered in CADL’s Library of Things, introduced in 2016.
The value of free access to books, music, movies and other media — not to mention “things” like a stud finder, a telescope or a Theremin — can be measured. The impact of other programs is not so quantifiable.
At the most basic level, libraries are among the last remaining public spaces where you aren’t required to buy something in order to enter, breathe and take up space.
“Our doors are open to anyone who wants to come in,” Duimstra said. “A family playing, a student doing homework, a homeless person plugging in their smartphone to look up benefits, or just have a nice warm place to sit down.”
All three Lansing branches provide weekly food packs filled with items such as shelf-stable milk, fruit, vegetables, canned meals and more. There are no eligibility requirements.
Duimstra is especially proud of Connections and Corrections, a partnership between CADL and Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wrigglesworth’s office.
In 2022, more than 200 recordings were made of Ingham County Jail inmates as they read books to their kids or grandkids. The recordings, and copies of the book, were shared with the kids.
“Not only did it touch 200 kids, but Sheriff Wrigglesworth has told me about the positive impact it has on the inmates,” Duimstra said. “It’s hard to quantify things like that.”
When CADL was formed in 1997, the growing digital divide between rich and poor was already a national issue. CADL jumped in to bridge the gap with public access to computer terminals, tech help and other programs.
A quarter century later, with smartphones or school-issued laptops in common use, the crucial issue isn’t hardware, but internet access.
During the pandemic, CADL lent out portable wi-fi hotspots for home use, but the two-week checkout period wasn’t enough for many students. CADL worked with area schools to identify students with the highest need and offer them yearlong hotspots to check out.
“Without the internet, you can’t go to school, can’t go to work, can’t apply for work, can’t apply for assistance — you can’t do anything,” Duimstra said. “We’re not going to solve it, but anything we can do to try to help people who can’t come into our space, to get them to that next point — we have to try.”
As usage trends change among the system’s 13 branches, Duimstra tracks the numbers, but he avoids using corporate terms like “underperforming.” CADL is not a for-profit chain store.using corporate terms like “underperforming.” CADL is not a forprofit chain store.
The downtown branch is heavily used, averaging more than 10,000 visits a month, outperfoming all others in per-visit checkouts, but circulation there is declining overall.
“If 500 people visit our Webberville branch or 100 people, it’s still important to have that branch in the community,” Duimstra said. “If a branch’s transactions are low for a year, we don’t scale back and move those resources to another library. We have to be smart about it, but that potential access is important. Some people would love it if we were open 24 hours.”
Two decades ago, when CADL was young, Madonna’s book “Sex” was a lightning rod for public objections. Taking potshots at library shelves is a familiar pastime that goes back to classics like “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” and in 2023, it’s open season across the country.
Duimstra acknowledged that the problem is familiar, but he said it “took a different turn” in recent years, centering almost entirely on books about the LGBTQ+ community.
“We have books about sexual education and sexuality that are probably on a par with Madonna’s ‘Sex,’ but all of those are heterosexual — no objections to those,” Duimstra said. “But you can see the very specific focus of the objections, the books they are objecting to.”
In 2022, voters in Ottawa County’s Jamestown Township declined twice to renew the operational millage of the Patmos Library in West Michigan amid controversy over books with LGBTQ+ themes. The library might close in 2024 if funding runs out and a millage is not approved.
“They’re willing to burn the whole thing down — a library with 60,000 items — based on 25 materials,” Duimstra said. “They’re not going to realize what they’re losing until it’s gone.”
Anyone who objects to an item on CADL’s shelf is welcome to fill out and submit a written challenge form that requires a certain amount of time, thought and literacy. A list of objectionable titles doesn’t cut the mustard.
“That’s what’s happening with a book like ‘Gender Queer,’” Duimstra said. “They share a list of titles and say, ‘Take these off the shelf.’” (Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel “Gender Queer: A Memoir” was listed by USA Today among the “most banned books of 2022.”)
Leave it to a librarian to turn a book challenge into a teachable moment.
“It’s almost like a test,” Duimstra said. “Did you read it? Did you read the whole thing? What parts of it do you object to?”
There’s no way to measure how many potential objections this thinly disguised book report assignment has weeded out, but Duimstra said the CADL system only received three written challenges in 2022. Nothing has been taken off the shelf, although some books have been moved to the adult collection.
Only one challenge, over sexual content in a French graphic novel, has reached Trotter’s desk since she started working at CADL in 2017.
“We’ve never faced what other communities are facing right now,” Trotter said. “Those titles people are complaining about elsewhere are circulating very well here. People are checking them out and not complaining. Knock wood, but I feel like we’re in a very lucky bubble here.”
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