New Things Are Happening at McCone County Library!

• Posted on March 15, 2024
• by mcconelibrary
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It’s been awhile since I bombarded you with information about your tax dollars at work.  It has been an extremely busy summer, autumn, and winter and I would like to share with you some of the great things happening at the library.  If you haven’t been in our library in a bit, buckle up because you are in for some surprises.

Last April, we were awarded a grant from LTC (Libraries Transforming Communities) in conjunction with The American Library Association. The $10,000 grant funded extensive changes in the children’s department. You will see some before and after pictures that document the differences.

Have you or your child ever wandered into the library and left without finding anything?  Were the large number of titles and rows of words intimidating or off-putting? This is what our remodel of the children’s department set out to correct. When you look for something good to read, the first thing a reader looks at is the cover.  You will see that the books are arranged visually and in small containers to encourage exploration and browsing.  Books are also grouped by topic or genre. The way a reader can look at the things that interest them, instead of browsing through everything trying to find a needle in a proverbial haystack.  Some readers are voracious and diverse, but many readers have certain styles or topics that they prefer and we have set up the library to cater to all types of readers. Just like some people can’t get enough broccoli while others prefer a bacon cheeseburger, so readers may prefer science fiction, fantasy, mystery, sports, historical fiction, or non-fiction.  Within their preferred genre, they may have even more specifics like baseball, but not football or robots, but not dragons.

With the reorganization came a refresh on titles as well.  We doubled the size of our Graphic Novels and tripled the size of our children’s audiobooks.  We replaced old classics with worn outdated covers and added many new series as well. by organizing our library by type we were able to see where there were areas that just didn’t have enough books, and we are working to fill those gaps in our collection.  We were able to do this in part by two more grants we secured.  The Dorothy Louise Kyler Fund in conjunction with the John Henry Eldred Jr. Foundation provided $3000 to purchase books for our library,  We were able to get a start on a graphic novel section for young adults as well as replace even more books that were well loved and in poor condition.  We even created a small audio book section for young adults that we will continue to grow. We received a grant from the Pilcrow Foundation that, with matching funds from Redwater Bank, allowed us to acquire over 100 new picture and chapter books.  A $5000 grant from America’s Farmers Grow Communities in conjunction with the Bayer Fund paid for our STEM Club this year learning about sound, art, codebreaking, and computers and also allowed us to purchase a few more books on science, engineering, math, and art.

I am pleased to announce that we have received the LTC grant again and will receive another $10,000 to continue to make changes and improve accessibility to our building.  We have scheduled a community conversation for May 2nd at 5 pm.  We will be discussing ways to make our county library more accessible to people with disabilities.  If you cannot attend the conversation and would like to contribute, please call the library, message us on Facebook, email us, or contact our website, You can even just stop me in the Post Office or grocery store to offer your suggestions.  We will also be posting a survey on our Facebook page and on the website on April 1st.  Once we have community feedback, we will begin to plan and execute further changes in the library.

We have also received another grant for $5000 that cannot be announced yet, but will also continue to help fund our efforts for children in our service area.

Once we had several months of statistics to prove the worth of our initial idea, we made the decision to roll out a smaller version of that to the Adult Fiction Section.  As much as I would like people to browse all day in the library, I know you have life things like work and laundry that get in the way. We reorganized the adult fiction books to make it as easy as possible to find something that you would like to read in almost no time.  We now have sections for Fiction, Christian Fiction, Romance. Science Fiction/Fantasy, Classics, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thrillers, and Horror. All are signed and labeled. Series are grouped together on the shelf and usually labeled with the main character. The sections are much more visual with more book covers showing rather than rows of spines.  Books were placed in sections to avoid that horrible moment when you take a book home that looks like one thing and it turns out very different when you actually get into it.  We are happy to help you navigate this system and find the perfect book for you .

We have also been doing work outside the library.  I am proud to take part in a second round of The Democracy Project with a grant from Humanities Montana.  We have two high school students in our group this year and they have spent the year learning about our government and how they can be a part of the system and effect positive change for issues that they care about. If you have been to a recent school board meeting, you may have seen some of our handy work.  The project that our students selected was to overhaul the high school library. Over the course of several months, we will be cleaning, organizing, and labeling and decorating shelves so that students can access the library and find the materials that they need, The Democracy Project students will  then be purchasing and donating some books to the high school library to refresh the collection.  They will also be hosting a voter registration dive in the high school to encourage all eligible students to participate in our government, I am so proud of our small but might group! I hope you pop into the high school library and see the changes that are in progress.

As you can see, it has been a busy few months.  I hope to see you all in the library soon.  As always, I wish for you something good to read and a cute picture of my cat Devil Kitty and her new kitten Bailey.