Kristin Haddock has been hired as the new library director, replacing Martha Stalker, who retired at the beginning of the year.
Though new to the position, Haddock is not new to the community, having served with the Sapulpa library for six years, and before that was the library director at Mounds for 8 years, and the only employee.
Coming to Sapulpa was a bit of an adjustment from Mounds, Haddock said. “The staff is a big plus here. The difference is that you have more room. At Mounds, you can see the entire library from my desk. And we don’t have the big rush of kids here like we did at Mounds, because the library was right next to the park, and the school was only two blocks away.”
There may not be an after-school rush, but that doesn’t mean that children don’t frequent the library.
“We have a free movie every third Tuesday of every month, and that’s free and we serve popcorn and drinks, and then we have storytime also on Tuesdays and we usually do a story in the craft. And then we we will put we will be starting the ‘adulting’ classes and it’s for teens for young adults.”
Those “Adulting 101” classes are great for high schoolers and college kids looking for a job or trying to learn how to prepare for the “real world.”
For adults, there’s a book club, about to start again in February. Haddock says they’ll be reading and discussing a time-traveling sci-fi book called “Kindred,” by Octavia Butler. “The main character is in present time and gets pulled back to when her ancestors were slaves. She’s connected to one of her old ancestors and every time he gets in trouble or something, she gets pulled back to him. She could be gone a day or month, but when she comes back to the present time, it’s only been a few minutes. But she never knows when it’s going to happen.”
The book is scheduled to be a series on FX, which is why they’re taking an interest in it now. “I’ve never read anything by her before, but I really liked the book.”
Aside from the usual events, Haddock is making plans to beef up security and expand their presence throughout the whole building. “With the ARPA grant that we received, we were able to get more technology put in the library. We have security cameras that were installed on the outside, so if anybody gets hurt, we’ll be able to see if anything happens.”
One of the other big changes coming is the plan to move staff out of the back room and into other portions of the library. “The children’s librarian will be moved over to the children’s department, and on of our circulation clerks is going to be at the circulation desk when you first walk in,” she said. “We want more of an outreach to teh patrons that come in, so that we’re not all kind of bunched up in here, and instead we’re out there with the patrons and more accessible to them.”
It’s no surprise that with the advent of the internet and the ubiquity of computers and cellphones, libraries just don’t have the presence in the community that they used to. But that doesn’t mean you should count them out altogether, Haddock says.
“We have an increase with homeschool children and a lot of Epic Charter school kids here. We have a lot of people that come from social security, that don’t have the internet at home, they’re applying for jobs, and especially with COVID happening, and DHS being closed, they worked online through their phone, but you can only do so much on your phone.”
Haddock says that libraries aren’t staying the in way of changing, technologically. “A lot of libraries are changing how their collection works to more digital,” she says. “We have digital access to books and movies, and we also put a lot into our collection for DVDs because a lot of people come and them out when they can’t afford Netflix and all the streaming apps. You could stream it on your phone, but it might use up all your data.”
The Sapulpa Library uses software like Overdrive and Libby to let cardholders checkout digital books just like they would a regular book—and yes, there’s a due date, just like a regular book, except instead of having to physically drop the book off, it’s just removed from the reader’s tablet or phone. “You can check out five at a time,” Haddock says. “You’ll get an alert that your book’s getting ready to be gone, and you can either renew it or let it go.” Like most other things, there are no fees associated with checking books out digitally.
Looks like the library is not only back, but it’s here to stay.
