She has visited 400 of Iowa's public libraries and she's seen all they offer -- including a cat!

By CHRISTIE VILSACK
April 19, 2004
DES MOINES, IOWA

“Libraries are the souls of our communities. They preserve the past, inform the present and prepare us for the future.” I don’t know how many times I’ve said this in the visits I’ve made to over 400 of Iowa’s 543 libraries. All Iowa’s libraries have this in common, but each is distinctive in some way that makes them memorable.

“Oh, Fort Dodge, sure that’s where they have a room honoring bandman Karl King.” Or, “Waverly, that’s the library with the community perennial garden.”

This past week, I visited the Dows library for lunch with the library board, library friends and Mayor Willis Muhlenbruch and his wife Iris. Before I left, librarian Gloria Stover presented me with a CD called “Songs From a Small Town Living Room” composed and sung by Don Bosch. He wrote the song “The Library” for a performance he did there a few years ago at the request of former librarian Iris Eriksen. Don teaches math at CAL-Dows High School and does some music on the side. This is the first library I’ve visited with its own song. It goes like this:

There’s a place to go
If you want to know,
Anything from A to Z.
Or if your status quo
Has got you feelin’ low
Visit your local li-brar-y

'Cause there’s a person there who is bound to please
Whether you’re a kid or an octogenarian.
Curious about bees, trees, or some rare disease
Just ask your friendly librarian.

So come on down, take a look
Peruse a magazine or check out a book
They got computers, movies, even a satellite dish
So come on in and make a wish…

Don is right, but many of Iowa’s libraries offer even more than you’d expect.

For example, after leaving Dows, I visited the new Iowa Falls library. It’s a beauty with a great view. You can sit in a big overstuffed leather chair and watch the Iowa River flow by. The only other library with a river view is Elkader’s, beside the Turkey River.

Iowa Falls also has what I call a “giggle” room, an area enclosed with glass widows where adolescents can hang out in clear view of the checkout desk. Rooms or areas for adolescents are common in libraries today, but this is the most public/private space I’ve seen. As someone who used to get kicked out the library in junior high for excessive giggling, I love this innovation.

I remember the first time I discovered that some libraries check out cake pans. Six years ago, I stopped at the Osage Library. I was surprised to see themed cake pans hanging in bags ready for the taking. If you want to bake a “Mickey Mouse” cake or a sculpted caboose, it makes sense to borrow one from the library instead of buying them to use only once. Since then I’ve found several other libraries that lend cake pans.

A visit to the Hudson library is like shopping at Von Maur. You never know when someone might sit down to play the grand piano right in the middle of the main reading room. This beautiful new building is tucked into a corner of the town square and was paid for entirely with private donations. Coffee shops and computer classes are becoming more the norm than the exception in Iowa libraries, but the Hudson piano is unique. It was a gift from musicians Robert and LaVonne Stiffler to honor her parents Charles and Marie Zimmerman. Librarian Mary Bucy reports that piano teachers hold recitals at the library and it’s not uncommon for 10 to 15 seniors who gather for coffee at the library to jam with their banjos, fiddles and guitars accompanied by someone on the piano.

Spencer is the only library in Iowa I know of that has a cat. In fact “Dewey Readmore Books” is well-known in library circles across the country, because he starred in a documentary about library cats called “Puss in Books.” Dewey was left in the book drop at the Spencer library in l988, and the library staff adopted him, contributing their pop can refund money to buy him food. You can see a picture of Dewey on the Spencer Library website spencerlibrary.com/deweybio.htm and order his postcards. His lengthy job description includes “sitting by the front door at 9:00 a.m. to greet the public.”

The Mason City library has the only literary autograph collection I’ve seen. The MacNider family donated the land for the library. May MacNider collected autographs, which she usually bought at auctions. Most of them displayed in the library are signed letters. They include Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill.

Charles City completed an addition to its library in 2001, which houses the art collection of Arthur Mooney, a photographer who was born in Charles City and worked for the Kodak Company in New York. His print collection includes a few Rembrandts, Picassos, and Chagalls. For many years the collection sat in boxes near the boiler in the basement. The custodian found a Rembrandt he liked and taped it to the boiler unaware of its value. A patron has donated funds to restore the print, and it will eventually hang in the gallery. Mooney also donated a collection of art books and resources to enlarge it.

Anything you want to know about World War II you can find out at the Calmer Library in northeast Iowa. Library board vice-president Darrell Hoff gave the library between 200 and 300 WWII books – fiction and non-fiction. Director Linda Crossland took me on a tour of the Veterans Room, which houses Hoff’s books plus uniforms, helmets and photos.

Solon’s library has the largest collection of dinosaur books in the state, but that’s a story for another day.

Several generations of library users have enjoyed the doll collection at the entrance to the children’s room of the The Kendall Young Library in Webster City. In l944 the Foster family donated the dolls their mother had collected from around the world. On the main floor patrons enjoy the sculptures of Abastenia Eberle, who was born in Webster City in l878 and later studied and worked in New York City. My favorite detail of this first class library is the stained glass dome, uncovered during a restoration, and the matching green and amber windows which librarian Cynthia Weiss found in the furnace room and had refurbished. Another window in the library was first donated to St. Paul’s Universalist Church in l898 by Jane Young. Her husband Kendall Young later left his entire estate to the city and endowed the library.

Stained glass is also a special feature of the Winterset Library. The architect chose to create an entry reminiscent of their old Carnegie Library with interior columns and the original stained glass window. I was as skeptical as many patrons when I saw the old car dealership that the city had decided to transform into a library, but the renovation is a tribute to the Carnegie heritage and acknowledgment of space needs in the computer age. I haven’t found another library where the floors in the children’s section are heated to make a toasty place to sit and hear a story on a cold winter day.

Most children’s areas have some focal point to engage a child’s imagination or provide a fun venue for reading. It might be an indoor tree house, a bathtub filled with pillows or a wooden replica of a John Deere tractor like the one in the Guthrie Center Library. But probably the most prominent feature of a library that attracts kids and grownups alike is “Sir Rustalot” at the Newton Public Library.

The dragon stands 30 feet tall at the library entrance. He was commissioned in l992 for the 50th anniversary of Max and Rebecca Gralnek by their daughter. The Connecticut artist Nicholas Swearer used salvage items like chain links, drill bits, doorknobs and steel pipes to create this whimsical creature, which has become a local landmark.

In the past year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has contributed more than 300 computers to Iowa’s libraries and have provided the resourses to train librarians in their use. Their legacy of technology infrastructure is reminiscent of Andrew Carnegie’s contribution when he provided resources for library buildings across America.

Many Iowa communities have their own “Andrew Carnegies” – philanthropists whose generosity has beneifited many generations through the public libraries. Some of them have their names engraved on the front of the buildings or their portraits just inside the door.

In some communities, the librarian or a board member is the patron saint, one whose resourcefulness and resolve have given the library that special character that defines it.

We Iowans are indeed fortunate to have the buildings – old and new – as well as the creative staffs and generations of patrons who haven’t forgotten the value of a public library.

By the way, the refrain to Don Bosch’s “The Library” goes like this:

And to borrow a phrase from the mil-i-tar-y
You can be all you can be down at the li-brar-y!