Community first.

by Makayla Secrist Staff Writer

Snow melt salt crunches underfoot in the cold March morning at the Estherville Public Library. A visitor pulls her coat more tightly around her and quickly makes it inside eager for the warmth and heat. The volunteer librarian looks up from her cross stitch project and smiles warmly. Floral air freshener and the musty scent of books young and old tickles the nose.

A bibliophiles dream, comfortable seating is dotted throughout both levels of the library all surrounded by books. From epic fantasies, comedies, romance, mystery, histories, biographies, and how to’s, there’s a book for everyone waiting somewhere on the shelves inside. While any library can draw out a person’s “inner Princess Belle” from Beauty and the Beast, books are not the only resource at the library’s disposal.

Just this month Estherville Public library hosted a free class all about employment law basics. Parents could send their children next door to enjoy “Tinker Tuesday” while they attended the class at the same time. Saturdays a knit and crochet group meet at the same time as Lego League for children so parents can enjoy much needed relaxation time working on their various projects.

Not listed on their monthly calendar are various outreach projects the library involves itself in. According to Tena Hanson, Library Director, “Our children’s librarian also does a great amount of outreach programming.” Next week the children’s librarian and assistant director will be helping Iowa Lakes Community College’s “Women and STEM” day with the middle school girls of the area.

Hanson herself and a few volunteers from the knitting group hosted “Crochet 101” for 4H students on Monday nights. “Again that doesn’t show up on our monthly calendar,” said Hanson, “we’re always doing whatever we can to help other groups in the community.”

“Our digital offering now far surpass our physical offerings,” said Hanson about future updates to the college. She explained that the library has been working diligently to continue to further their online presence and provide materials to anyone who wants to use them, “I want to say it was about 80,000 ebooks and now we’re well beyond that.”

“People come here for all sorts of reasons some of which are very personal,” said Hanson. She explains that people may come for help with an application online, faxing tax reports, making copies, or even just a starting point of a search when they don’t know where to begin. Hanson shared the example of a woman coming to the library in hopes of help getting a copy of her birth certificate from another state.

When asked if she had any interesting stories about the patrons that come to the library, Hanson had the look of a war veteran cross her face, but refused specifics due to confidentiality reasons, “There are some real characters that hang out at the library because we’re the only place in town that encourages loitering.”

Hanson then reiterates that the library is for literally everyone. Anyone from any background, culture, people group, etc. is free to come inside and use what they wish.