LIBRARYAWARE COMMUNITY AWARD 2017
Finding
and
Filling
Needs From books to bikes to banks,
Mississippi Valley Library District
steps up to address critical
service gaps
By John N. Berry III
Of the 2,635 people who live in the Village of
Fairmont City, IL, 71.4 percent are immigrants who speak
Spanish as their first or only language. Most of the adults
migrated from Mexico and have a fourth to sixth grade
reading level. Some youngsters are “dreamers,” undocu-
mented children who were brought here from Mexico,
so termed because they are eligible for deferred action
under the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien
Minors (DREAM) Act. Their younger siblings, born in
the United States, are U.S. citizens.
The village has few jobs or commerce, no elementary
schools (the last one closed in 2009), no preschools or day-
care centers, few recreational activities, and limited digital
access. Although amenities and services are available in
nearby communities, Fairmont City folks often can’t access
them because of language barriers, documentation issues, or
severely limited transportation.
To serve this high-demand community effectively re-
photos ©2017 sid hastings
quires a scrappy, grassroots library that throws preconcep-
tions of what constitutes core library service out the window
and designs to community needs from scratch. Luckily,
that’s exactly what they’ve got, and that innovative and
essentially engaged approach is what won the Mississippi
Valley Library District the 2017 LibraryAware Commuity
John N. Berry III is Editor-at-Large, LJ
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ljx170401libraryAware.indd 26
Award, presented by LJ and funded by LibraryAware,
a product of EBSCO Publishing’s NoveList Division. It
carries a prize of $10,000.
The library begins
In 2000, the Collinsville Memorial Public Library (CMPL)
decided to extend library service to nearby Fairmont City.
CMPL went through training, assessment, and planning.
In 2004, it combined library services in the area into the
Mississippi Valley Library District (MVLD). In 2006, the
voters of Fairmont City chose to join the library district, and
Holy Rosary Catholic School offered the district the use of a
classroom for the summer.
Katie Heaton, now manager of the Fairmont City
Library Center (FCLC), was hired by CMPL in 1997 and
assigned to the project from the beginning. Heaton’s attitude
explains how the library became the award winner. “I see a
need, a real need,” she says, “and we try to fill it.”
Staff members started building trust—and creative li-
brary services—right away. The makeshift library opened
with 4,000 items and provided a summer reading program
along with materials and digital access for all residents. The
community didn’t want to lose library services when school
reopened, so the American Legion offered a hall rental
to continue services year-round. The FCLC moved into
the small legion hall in 2008. In 2010, MVLD bought the
3/17/2017 4:54:06 PM

American Legion building for $185,000 from MVLD funds
and began expanding its collections and programs.
Deeper needs
From that new permanent base of operations, FCLC moved
to meet the deeper needs of the community. In partnership
with the Village of Fairmont City, Collinsville Community
Unit School District #10, the Latino Roundtable of South-
western Illinois, and other local organizations, the library
advocates for and engages with the community to develop
an array of library services that foster personal and profes-
sional growth for everyone in Fairmont City.
The library modified its application procedures to accept
Mexican government-issued Matriculas Consulares as identi-
fication, allowing all residents access to full-service library
accounts. Annual visits from the Mexican Consulate provide
assistance to Mexican residents needing to obtain or renew
their documentation.
Ready for school
FCLC’s Kids Corner was an effort to help provide both
child care and kindergarten readiness. There is no licensed
day care in Fairmont City. No one was addressing preschool
needs. Heaton noticed that kids came to FCLC with their
mothers, who took English classes, so FCLC started its free
preschool program with a growing list of activities to occupy
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ljx170401libraryAware.indd 27
COMMUNITY CHANGE-MAKER
(Clockwise from far l.): FCLC shares
space with TheBANK; Collinsville manager
Kyla Waltermire (l.) and FCLC manager
Katie Heaton lead a bilingual story time
in a bilingual kindergarten class at Kreitner
Elementary School in Collinsville; FCLC’s
Teen Initiative offers students a place to
study and access social media; librarian
Phyllis Beare (r.) encourages young patrons
to have “Fun with Phyllis”; the monthly
“Pokémon & Magic the Gathering” at
FCLC draws a crowd, led by former staffer
Leonardo Chavez (top l.)
and work with the children. Unlike
many public library children’s offer-
ings, parents can drop off their kids
and don’t have to stay with them.
“We first taught them to write
their names,” Heaton recalls. “I asked
the schools what they needed. They
asked us to teach them to write and
recognize their names. It took a long time to convince par-
ents that it was OK to let their small children come to FCLC
for preschool, but when [the]mother got work, they came.”
Of course, the library’s help doesn’t stop when children
enter school. With Americorps assistance, FCLC provides
free homework aid to students of all ages. “The majority of
people who show up at FCLC have somewhere between a
fourth and fifth grade education. That means there isn’t any
help at home for these kids for homework and studies. They
face education and language barriers. We had to help them
overcome both of those,” Heaton reports.
To fill that gap, Southern Illinois University sent home-
work helpers. “It has been a great program, and it helps the
kids overcome that language problem,” says Heaton.
FCLC also works with children to get them ready for
school in the concrete sense: the library hosts a Back to School
Carnival at which families play games to win tickets that are
redeemed for school supplies. The event is sponsored by the
Newsong Fellowship, a church located in Edwardsville, IL.
“When the church leaders came to our library wanting
to do a service project, I remember telling them that if they
were looking for a great place to do a good deed, they had
found it!” Heaton laughs.
As a result of the FCLC presence and involvement in the
community, high school graduation rates have risen from
46.5 percent in 2000 to 52.5 percent in 2015.
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 LIBRARYAWARE COMMUNITY AWARD 2017

LJ would like to thank James L. Blanton, a 2012 LJ Mover & Shaker (M&S) and
LibraryAware Director of the Louisville Free Public Library, KY, the 2016 LibraryAware Community
Community Award Award winner; John Chrastka, Executive Director of EveryLibrary and a 2014 M&S;
Amy Garmer, Director of the Aspen Institute Dialogue on Public Libraries;
2017 Honorees and Randall Reid, Southeast Regional Director, International City/County
Management Association (ICMA), for their help in selecting this year’s honorees.

Catawba County Library
Suzanne White, Director
In 2015, the Catawba County Library (CCL),
based in Newton, NC, completed an
extensive community-based strategic planning
process. Driven by the feedback from
more than 1,500 residents, the library
added a full-time digital services librarian
position and set aside more than $100,000
in a joint capital improvement account to
improve library IT and facility infrastructure.
Community feedback isn’t a onetime
thing for the library either. The library
has embraced the Aspen and Harwood
institutes’ initiatives to turn outward and
connect more deeply with its populace. As
part of those efforts, it reinvented a part-
time marketing role to create a full-time
community engagement specialist. Among
the examples of getting outside the library
walls, Catawba’s Big Read featured 2,175
books placed as “treasure finds” in malls,
storefronts, gyms, community centers,
organizations, and businesses, plus library-
led programs at the mall, in coffee shops
and schools, with community groups,
and at local city council meetings.
At service provider Centro Latino, a Big
Read book discussion transformed into a
Spanish Book Club. Increased collaboration
with Centro Latino soon highlighted the
need for enhanced library materials and
publicity in Spanish, an issue the library
“tackled immediately.” Catawba has also
seen increased Latino family participation
in the library, is conducting more programs
and classes in Spanish, and is distributing
a Spanish newsletter to schools through
ESL directors.
Library partnerships have increased
71 percent year over year, including a new
partnership with the local Hmong residents
to preserve Hmong heritage through a
National Endowment for the Humanities
Common Heritage grant–funded digitization
project and a school partnership that led
to the development of a student digital
access card. Catawba is currently working
on a grant proposal to establish a Pop-up

Educational aspiration “I have the largest collection of books in Spanish

Beyond current schoolwork support, the library is getting
students to set their sights on more ambitious goals. When
the library opened, “The young were very much in the mo-
ment. There was little talk of futures, no talk of college,”
Heaton says. “There was a 50 percent dropout rate from the
high schools. Now aspirations have changed.”
“I’d ask them what they want to be when they grow up,
LEFT PHOTO COURTESY OF CCL; RIGHT PHOTO BY MIKE SINCLAIR, COURTESY OF kcpl
around here,” Heaton says with pride. “I started with only
two shelves [and] put out the word that we needed any and
all Spanish-language books anyone wanted to donate. We
buy as many as we can from our materials budget. It is very
difficult to get books originally written in Spanish, but
people didn’t like books that had been translated. They said
translations lost something. I did order some from Mexico,

and they would answer a farmhand, work in a hotel, be a
bricklayer. ‘What about something more than that?’ I’d ask.
Do you want to be a doctor?” she adds.
“ ‘What are you talking about?’ they would say. Now
many say things like, ‘I want to be an engineer.’ It took a lot
of hand-holding to get them to even think about college,”
Heaton asserts. Now some who came years ago are what
Heaton calls “my first-generation college kids.”
The library partners with the Hispanic Arts Council of
St. Louis to provide college prep classes (“College Now!/
Universidad Ya!”) that assist Latinx students to graduate
from high school and continue their education as first-­
generation college students. A Teen Initiative program
exposes fifth to 12th graders to new technologies as part of
the Illinois State Library’s Project Next Generation grant.
It offers a safe after-school teen space and provides a teen
lock-in for which participants must earn the right to spend
the night by being actively involved in library services.
Spanish spoken here
FCLC hires bilingual English/Spanish speakers from the
community to staff the library. The library’s English and
Spanish collections for adults and children are among the
richest in the region.
and they were very popular.” Naturally FCLC uses bilin-
gual signs so all residents feel welcome.
Southwestern Illinois College provides free English-
language classes at FCLC.
Getting patrons moving—literally
Heaton joined local advocacy groups to push for public
transportation until the Collinsville Regional Bus Route
18 was established. This gave the community access to local
and regional services and made commuting much easier,
shorter, and less expensive.
Yet FCLC’s efforts to get its patrons on the road to suc-
cess didn’t stop there. The bicycle is a primary mode of
transportation in Fairmont City and not just for recreation.
So the library partners with Cycle of Giving, a local char-
ity run by Allen Hogg, to offer an annual free bike repair
day. Many locals of all ages line up with their bikes to get
repairs and rejuvenation. Hogg brings chains, tires, and
other parts along with restored bikes. To get service, kids
have to write a book report. Heaton tells of one middle-
aged man who came with his bike; it was a wreck. Hogg
replaced it with a newly restored bicycle so the man could
more easily ride to work. “The guy was overwhelmed,”
Heaton says.

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 Library, embedding the library even further
in the area. For such responsiveness, CCL
is this year’s second-place winner and
will receive $7,500.
Kansas City Public Library
Crosby Kemper III, Director
Missouri’s Kansas City Public Library’s
(KCPL) deep engagement with its
community is never more evident than in
its work to close the digital divide. Says
judge Randall Reid of the ICMA, “Kansas
City exemplifies the strategic leveraging by
local government leaders of a major library
system to offset the economic inequities
within the metropolitan area by bridging
the critical gap in access to digital content
and resources.” KCPL helped found Digital
Inclusion KC, a coalition of representatives
from more than 70 nonprofits, government
agencies, corporations, and more and hosted
two summits and a town hall gathering to
examine trends, discuss challenges and
opportunities, spotlight current inclusion
efforts, and share best practices.
KCPL is partnering with the city’s public
schools to allow 70 students at three high
schools in underserved areas to check out
mobile Wi-Fi hot spots and receive one-
year, unlimited data service subscriptions
and was instrumental in connecting the
school district to Sprint’s 1Million Project,
allowing distribution of 500 more free hot
spots to students. KCPL was also closely
involved in Kansas City’s selection as one of
19 pilot cities in the nationwide Community
Connectivity Initiative. Closer to home,
the library’s participation in a Google
Fiber–sponsored program funded a full-
time digital inclusion Fellow in 2016. The
library opened its ONENORTH Technology The library is also addressing the
Center at the downtown Central Library in health-care gap: in one of the most
2016, offering digital literacy assessment, economically distressed corridors of
training, and one-on-one assistance. Kansas City, the L.H. Bluford Branch
Beyond digital, KCPL is convening houses a Health and Wellness Center in
crucial local conversations. In partnership partnership with Truman Medical Centers
with the American Public Square and the Health Sciences Institute of
organization, the library hosts public Metropolitan Community Colleges–Penn
forums on pressing local issues ranging Valley. Offerings include fitness classes,
from indecision on the future of the weight-loss challenges, chronic disease
Kansas City International Airport to the and diabetes self-management programs,
effectiveness of KC’s public schools. and health fairs, plus a mobile market that
The library’s full-time refugee and makes fresh produce available to residents
immigrant services outreach manager with otherwise limited access. For such
coordinates citizenship preparation and deep partnerships, KCPL is this year’s
helps connect immigrant populations third-place winner and will be awarded
with KCPL’s other services. $5,000.—Meredith Schwartz

Banking on the library
The newest service at FCLC is a fully functional bank
branch located in the library. Previously, FCLC had part-
nered with banks to provide financial literacy programs. But
with only a credit union in the community, it was clear that
the residents lacked access to financial services. TheBANK
of Edwardsville recognized that the library is the commu-
nity hub and agreed to cover renovation costs to establish
a banking center in the building. TheBANK of Edwards-
ville’s Fairmont City location opened in November 2015.
It is the first and only fully bilingual banking facility in the
St. Louis metro area.
In one year, TheBANK’s holdings in Fairmont City are
$1.5 million in deposits, 325 checking and saving accounts,
and 155 mortgages equaling $10 million. The service model
is proving to be so successful that TheBANK promotes it
for replication in its financial network. The library/bank
partnership also earned TheBANK a national Commu-
nity Commitment Award. As an unexpected bonus, The-
BANK is installing fiber-optic Internet connectivity in
all its branches, which means that soon the library/bank
building will be the first in the village with a fiber line. This
marks the beginning of the end to the community’s limited
digital access, previously provided by the Illinois Century
Network. FCLC plans to use the prize money from this
award to add its digital equipment to that fiber line.
Jack of all trades
The village does not have a post office, so the library pro-
vides partial mail services, including a mail drop and the sale
of stamps and envelopes, as well as international fax service.
A partnership with AARP offers free tax assistance for low-
income individuals, seniors, and those with simple forms.
The library also works to meet its patrons’ most fundamen-
tal needs: FCLC hosts an annual coat and toy giveaway each
December—in 2016, 350 people were served. Also, the library
partners with the University of Illinois Extension to maintain
a community garden on library grounds. In 2016, the garden
grew 473 pounds of produce, which was distributed through-
out the area. The Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation
provides access to a traveling nurse for health care at FCLC.
A library delivers
The development of FCLC has taught the Fairmont City
community the value of an engaged library. Now, many
village officials frequently visit the library, partner on events,
make donations, or volunteer there. The village has provided
funds to update the building and support library ­services.
Alex J. Bregen, Fairmont City Village president, explains
how FCLC has transformed life there: “The Fairmont City
Library Center has demonstrated its ability to make our
community aware of what a library can do, and [it has]
delivered on that promise. We didn’t know we needed a li-
brary until we got one. It has been a place of transformation
for many residents. Our community has seen many changes
since the library opened its doors.... Poverty rates have de-
creased, reading and math scores have increased, high school
graduation rates have increased, and our streets are safer with
the youth having a place to go after school to become en-
gaged in activities. Many say the library is the best thing that
has happened to the village in years.”
From promise to proven impact, that kind of reputa-
tion shows the best of what a library and community can
achieve together. n

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