[Libs-Or] Oregon Humanities posts story about Douglas County libraries

Fri Feb 1 13:22:13 PST 2019

Oregon Humanities just distributed this article to their email subscribers…

Stephanie Lind
Program Supervisor for Outreach & Youth Services
Washington County Cooperative Library Services
stephaniel at wccls.org<mailto:stephaniel at wccls.org> | 503-846-3214

From: Oregon Humanities [mailto:kholt at oregonhum.ccsend.com] On Behalf Of Oregon Humanities
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2019 12:54 PM
To: Stephanie Lind <stephaniel at wccls.org>
Subject: [MARKETING] Beyond the Margins: Returned by Caitlyn May

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Beyond the Margins
Late-January 2019

We email an essay, video, or book excerpt by an Oregon writer or artist to Oregon Humanities magazine subscribers twice each month. We call these essays Beyond the Margins<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtFUhYszDCOURgUmFfrIwqdLhECaGtoPskImC6bVDPSJ6WV56mV-dNZbXOKSP1N5Qxh4T3mIR_i6y4K8zlLZpmJIcb2TWCwPkI03vs9mKUCzB7RaZe_qqiCuGT9BVRC9_WjBFxZMnB8Nw&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==>. To view past Beyond the Margins essays, visit our website<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtFUhYszDCOURgUmFfrIwqdLhECaGtoPskImC6bVDPSJ6WV56mV-dNZbXOKSP1N5Qxh4T3mIR_i6y4K8zlLZpmJIcb2TWCwPkI03vs9mKUCzB7RaZe_qqiCuGT9BVRC9_WjBFxZMnB8Nw&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==>.

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On October 10, 2018, the Mildred Whipple Library handed out brand new library cards to a crowd of approximately seventy people who came to support the library’s first official day of operation after being closed for twenty months. Photo by Noah Thomas

Returned

How Douglas County lost and regained its libraries

By Caitlyn May

This story is part of our Emerging Journalists, Community Stories<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtEOqd4l4Yq9jmV-O6oloLGNNoeNOs9n0j1vVUZIA09LSfBdUvXzdDzeNsWFQCqGV9PcC37272IdWBRfRMPXpDdqvCcHfZdOC2X7FHnkbDj0ra7OwER4RvSNSY2QtDrfEV-IIjXgIDSrSGYvsVGN3V5DSOG7-9PJjh7ovcR7oEtjZ78plX6Gk810XIpt0mmkDnCY4k6vvjauGElNKNpAcsAs=&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==> fellowship project, which is funded in large part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtPhqMNLw29-DIOA5zzUxT9x21NulgyvlxUf-KeWigUzlzTtXYSe_liEAsUl-hbDZFpKtn0aYVJsk7OIU4wDvpKQ=&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==> and the Pulitzer Prizes<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtEOqd4l4Yq9jojM1W3721n18qZaZUmfZBbRCCALVJr3GfcaEeHIAlkiskcVUyP3G9zsOdVsU9CFbiUsBSO2v9IknKDwCFUkWVQ==&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==>. Caitlyn May is one of three journalists who worked on stories as part of this project. She worked with Pulitzer Prize finalist Les Zaitz. This is the beginning of May's story about the closure of the Douglas County Library system and what happened next. Read the whole story on our website<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtBo8s73c4wMTxPgJ_fgW3Of6pDnOp83TMoatJ6QzboSNsJFhVItVJ3O6Hwme5cDEjKDTWbAs5qD9Ez8dkB5DlNBwuaVKEpa702CD25ks8-fQsOARs0o6fCRjuNseqov0R5K9cCYqJWIwKathMhTlLiM=&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==>.

Lolly Frost was worried.

By 2012, Lolly, then six years old, had been going to the Mildred Whipple Library in Drain, Oregon, since before she was born. “I grew up here and I would always use the library,” her mother, Joy Frost, said. “And then when Lolly came along, I started taking her.” Frost was on the library board and would come home and talk about how the library’s budget was constantly on the chopping block. “It would get [Lolly] fired up,” Frost said.

Lolly decided she would save the library. Her first idea included drawing fliers and selling chicken eggs, but in December 2012, she found a better way. “She got this little cookie factory for Christmas and she said she could save the libraries with cookies . . . and she started calling up people taking orders,” Frost said. Lolly didn’t charge for her cookies—she instead asked for donations to the library and together, she and her mother packed orders and delivered them around Drain in Douglas County. The effort raised nearly $5,000, and Lolly’s money saved the children’s program that year, but it couldn’t keep the library safe forever.

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Once the main library in Douglas County, the Roseburg Library was closed after the county commission voted to shutter the Douglas County Library System. Photo by Caitlyn May

In January 2017, the Douglas County Commission voted to close its library system—the main building in Roseburg and its ten branches around the county—citing a lack of funds after voters rejected a November 2016 ballot measure that would have levied a tax of 44 cents per $1,000 of assessed home values. Some county residents blamed the loss of a federal safety net of funding from the Secure Rural Schools program, conjured almost two decades ago by the federal government as part of a solution to lost timber money. Others condemned the closing as a conspiracy fueled by a culture of small government and the desire for no new taxes. Carisa Cegavske, a reporter for Roseburg’s News-Review, one of the only media outlets in Douglas County, said, “I would say overall the feeling was negative that was borne out in the vote. We’re a very conservative county. Folks are very anti-tax and so it wasn’t received all that well overall.”

The commission had front-loaded the budget in 2015–16 in the hope that voters would approve the tax levy to keep the library system open. But when the measure died, so did the system, and one by one the libraries closed until the main branch in Roseburg shut its doors on May 31, 2017. It marked the end of a sixty-one-year effort by residents and local government alike to continue providing the community with a public library. Many municipalities have met similar fates as costs climb, revenue falls, and cuts empty the lifeblood of the community out onto Main Street.

“Already in 2012, when I arrived, the county was really struggling,” Cegavske said. “The county commissioners were trying to find programs they could offload in one way or another or make them self-sufficient, which they did with the parks department and garbage service, but the trouble with the library is [that] you can’t really make a library self-sufficient, so to speak. If they charge their patrons, then it’s no longer a public library. It’s something else entirely.”

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Drop boxes were closed in June of 2017 after the county commission voted to shut down the eleven libraries in Douglas County. Photo by Caitlyn May

The idea of a public library was born on April 9, 1833, in the town of Peterborough, New Hampshire. Reverend Abiel Abbott had a proposal: he wanted to use tax dollars to fund a free public library, the first of its kind. The idea spread quickly along the East Coast and then westward. Kenneth Breisch, a professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in the history and design of American libraries, said, “New England was ground zero, but then the real impetus for the extension of libraries in small towns was, of course, Andrew Carnegie and his offer to construct library buildings.” To qualify for Carnegie library funds, towns had to tax themselves 10 percent of the cost of the building to ensure it would continue to be used as a library. Carnegie’s funding allowed both metropolitan and small rural communities access to information through public libraries. Libraries, Breisch said, “are the most democratic institution in America.”

In 2017, almost two centuries since the conception of the first public library, the singed breezes of an unusually warm summer in Douglas County gave way to the reds and oranges and yellows of a country autumn. Supporters in all eleven libraries—facing the impending death of the countywide system—were toiling away: cataloging books, driving hours to retrieve their repossessed public computers, and trying to make sense of the complicated process of managing tax money as newly elected officials. Many were now in charge of the libraries they tried to save, because when the 2016 levy—Ballot Measure 10-145—was grounded, public support soared and the libraries found their way through the politics to reopen on their own terms. The return of the public library in Douglas County (population 109,405) however, wasn’t a united effort, missing the support of the system it had had for more than six decades. The libraries’ reopenings were a new reality built on the false hope of sustainable volunteer forces, revealing the hushed conflicts that splintered services and, in some cases, called the future of Douglas County’s libraries into question.

📖 Keep reading<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtBo8s73c4wMTxPgJ_fgW3Of6pDnOp83TMoatJ6QzboSNsJFhVItVJ3O6Hwme5cDEjKDTWbAs5qD9Ez8dkB5DlNBwuaVKEpa702CD25ks8-fQsOARs0o6fCRjuNseqov0R5K9cCYqJWIwKathMhTlLiM=&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==>

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Caitlyn May became a journalist by accident. A corrections center was being built in the center of her town, so she wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper that sparked a career. After graduating from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication in 2016, she opted to invest in a small, rural community and served as editor of the Cottage Grove Sentinel with a focus on media literacy, community engagement, and digital inclusion. She recently left her post to accept a job as a city and education reporter for the Albany Democrat Herald in Linn County, Oregon.

Oregon Humanities is committed to bringing people together across difference and exploring the thoughts, perspectives, and experiences of Oregonians. You can find more essays and videos from Beyond the Margins<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtFUhYszDCOURgUmFfrIwqdLhECaGtoPskImC6bVDPSJ6WV56mV-dNZbXOKSP1N5Qxh4T3mIR_i6y4K8zlLZpmJIcb2TWCwPkI03vs9mKUCzB7RaZe_qqiCuGT9BVRC9_WjBFxZMnB8Nw&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==> and Oregon Humanities<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtNutkfNBGyaQrGYlTBqcxayImpIAUISHJDJimNh36NZUBXbASmAvwodt0imBMmanpBx8o2izI303C3boM6YJNIzimd5vqBs5le_u-O37meIZ1FNvXY9H6xU=&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==> magazine<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtNutkfNBGyaQrGYlTBqcxayImpIAUISHJDJimNh36NZUBXbASmAvwodt0imBMmanpBx8o2izI303C3boM6YJNIzimd5vqBs5le_u-O37meIZ1FNvXY9H6xU=&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==> and learn about in-person events<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtHtAcrjFgbBN_IJvZMB6f_n1JI7OyXz9Wa-ByXKdVtQPPvkQ1OgRuwn_0otMs-Reo1m3REGgcZAmiyJl_8UoqQAGf2dcb-L1Y2zValaXSc9P&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==> around the state at oregonhumanities.org<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001TER-CoAgTe1YvLINCq7yuX4I_BQri1SQLRT_G-M496NHEncePbXDtNHRaRmLWYE7ACKr1Us0j-lnX8iuh0-xGc0PQ3H773WK0o0_Ybyp2ZwbsDFLT-72IEu57eZK1dMmkDGMEBOS_YJgsniwoUlorg==&c=qsCAatnrsTsrDH53FYIAvVDeD3ZypbnnQr7tOUlhyywKOaNz_cC08g==&ch=V_jyh_hufs4sXYzu2gn0sSc9vQUPtoeAR6myXylFNNGDsBznBDxXoA==>.

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