The Napa Library ... a New Day for Libraries

By Kathleen Reynolds

When you hear the word “library,” what springs to mind? Books, right? But, wow–there’s so much more in today’s library.

“The biggest change is the significant funding of e-resources and e-books,” says Library Director Anthony Halstead, who has worked at the Napa Library for 16 years and held the post of Director since 2020. “Their use has just skyrocketed, and I know so many people who said they’d never read e-books; they want to hold real books. We had a lot of people convert to e-materials during COVID. We’re promoting the benefits to accessing them.”

E-books are still books, you say. Oh, but there’s more.

“Another big change we’ve seen is the Library of Things,” says Halstead. “That’s a collection of non-book, non-media items like telescopes, guitars, keyboards, puzzles and board games. People can subscribe to streaming services, but they might not want to pony up money for a guitar or ukelele, because they don’t know if they’ll like it. If there is a big meteor shower on a certain date and a person doesn’t have a real interest in it all year long, they can check out a telescope or binoculars and can use it while this event happens. Then they can return it and someone else can use it. The other benefit is trying something before you buy it. I think we’re meeting that need in both of those cases. One board game we have now is well over $100. That’s not an impulse buy. But you might like to try it, and you can do that at the library. That collection has the biggest increase in size and in use since 2020.”

“The public has responded to the Library of Things in a big way. At one point, about a year ago, 90% of that collection was either on-hold, checked out or in transit to someone. That figure is just outrageously high. Normally, we’d be 25% to 50% for physical books. But the Library of Things has a huge usage. We ship items throughout our county, we have four locations so if we have something in Napa, it can go to Calistoga or another of the libraries, and vice versa. It meets the needs throughout the county in ways it didn’t before.”

“Speaking of Calistoga, in terms of board games, you can’t easily buy board games there. You have to drive to Santa Rosa or Napa or buy it on Amazon. The library is serving an important role.”

“Borrowing from the library is environmentally friendly. With borrowing, the books don’t take up space in your house. I’ve always said that libraries were environmental stewards because it’s one book that 50 people can read versus 50 books that one person can read. That’s a lot of paper saved. It’s billions of pounds of paper and trees just for books alone. The same is true of board games and even more so, a puzzle that’s put together once and then sits around until eventually it’s thrown away. That’s an absolute waste. But a puzzle that’s used 50 times, until we lose a few pieces, and it isn’t in circulation anymore. We circulate coloring books. You might only color five or six pages in a coloring book. Not only can you check those out of the library, but you get to see what other people did with the other pages in that book, which is kind of fun. It’s like a communal art project.”

The library also offers remote classes and lectures. For instance, they have Author Talks and Master Gardener demonstrations online. There are “tangle art” classes, called Zentangle, where patrons can pick up packages of materials at the library monthly and create art while streaming with an instructor. Halstead refers to these combinations of live and streaming classes as hybrids.

“We’ve seen a return and desire to do things in person. We leaned into things that people wanted to come together to do, that they couldn’t do on their own. One example is the music.”

“We have a program with Festival Napa Valley where they bring in musicians once a month,” he says. “The March one was for St. Patrick’s Day. At 9:30 in the morning, we had about 200 kids and parents here waiting for Irish music to play. It was a young audience, 5 and under for the most part, and during the first song, a girl started dancing at the front. A few songs in, kids were creating their own two rounds at the front, just going in circles. You can listen to music at home, but that interaction is not something you’re going to get if you’re not in person. It connects to other people, through song, through story, etcetera.”

“You can’t afford to have Irish musicians or cellists come to your house. It’s a different type of experience if you go to the library to hear music performed than if you go to the symphony. The same group, Festival Napa Valley, came with a cellist and a violinist and the children got to see violins and cellos; they could have a conversation with the musicians and ask questions. You see those instruments in different ways than going to the symphony. Which, by the way, is not cheap. It’s expensive, so we think about (what people will get) from the experience.”

“People still want to come to Story Time, they still want to come to hear authors talk, they want to have experiences. There are things you want to do but just couldn’t do another way. For instance, animal visits. We’ve got programs this summer where someone brings in giant reptiles for people to see. We have ongoing partnerships with groups in town, like Wildlife Rescue and di Rosa. To learn about that and see about that, those are opportunities you just wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s a new day for libraries and in some ways, it’s just a way to help people experience things.”

The library runs the gamut from these types of in-person experiences to remote access and remote programing to benefit the public. If you want to digitally read, learn or study, the Hoopla database covers over 50,000 topics, including areas like art, photography, marketing, jokes, music, design and test preparation for adults and kids.

“Our use of databases is very intense, and it continues to grow.” Halstead says. “In the last two fiscal years, we’ve seen the use of Hoopla expand by 1,000 uses per month. It started at about 4,100 and ended at 5,100. This year, we started at 5,100 and it’s already at 6,100+. That continues to grow.”

“One of the neat things about e-books is if you want the font to be really big, it can be really big; if you want the background to be black instead of white and the text to be white, you can easily do that. Just push a button. It can be Sunday night, and you’ve just finished a book and want to start the next one in a series, you can often get to that immediately. The convenience is there for people. I read physical books, too, but I read digital books. We’ve seen a lot of movement in that direction.”

The area previously dedicated to magazines now houses a large Spanish language section.

“There’s a higher population of Spanish speakers than those who use the library, but it’s definitely growing. I think that’s an audience that we have a lot of room to grow and an opportunity from which to learn. We’ve been doing conversations with Spanish speakers specifically throughout our county for the past few months to learn more about them. And not necessarily just about libraries; in fact, we’re targeting those who aren’t library users because we don’t want to lead them into library answers. One of the questions we’re asking them is ‘What do you do for fun?’ It’s going to mean different things to different people and different families, if you have younger kids, older kids, retired people, etcetera. What we’re hoping to get from them is what are things we could do that we’re not doing now. We want to appeal to a population that isn’t necessarily a user today.”

Halstead says that it’s not new that certain populations don’t understand the library. He points out that the word in Spanish for library is bibliotheca, but the word in Spanish for bookstore is librería, which sounds like the word library. If a person comes from a country that doesn’t have public libraries as a common occurrence, they might think there’s a charge to use the library or they may not know that the libraries existed.

“We’re constantly trying to find ways to bring people into the building but also to partner with other organizations. Because people are busy. When we asked what people do for fun, a lot of the people said ‘Nothing.’ People don’t do anything for fun because it’s either too expensive, it requires them to drive somewhere, or they can’t do it as a family. For some activities and events, we have to provide childcare; have a craft or watch a movie. We should have something for the adults to come to, but also something that the kids can do.”

The Napa County Library circulates about 950,000 items a year and has over 300,000 visitors in all four locations per year. There are some 50,000 card holders including families. The Library is the most visited department on the Napa County website.

Halstead says his vision is to offer things people can’t do on their own, continue programs that offer experiences, such as putting library books in places where people have to go and wait like pediatrician’s office, laundromats and Health and Human Services offices. Inside the books are stamps or stickers saying the book was donated by the Friends of the Napa Library, the website and how the children or parents can get more books.

They’ve worked to establish the “Napa County Library at Juvenile Hall,” explaining to the kids where to get the resources they need when they leave. They’re working on furnishing the kids there with tablets with access to e-materials, e-books and e-audio books.

“A lot of people think a library is just the place you go when you have homework or it’s the thing you used to do when you were little; we want to show people, no, you can come into a yoga class, you can come to a journaling class.”

Regarding possible cutbacks in federal funding, Halstead explains, “The vast majority of our funding, 80%+, comes from dedicated property tax. It is phenomenal and most libraries don’t get funded this way. We’re lucky that we have off-the-top library funding through property tax, not the General Fund. However, our literacy program is funded by the State of California, which uses a combination of its own funds and federal funds. I don’t know how much funding may be cut. But for us, the vast majority of funding comes locally from property tax, from Friends of the Library and from the Library Foundation, a smaller percent from the State, nd a very small, rare percent from the federal government.”

“I want people to know that libraries are for everyone and that we respond to public feedback and are always looking to meet the needs of the community. When it changes, we change with it. And there’s ease of access to materials no matter where people may be. Whether that’s mailing things to people’s homes, which we do through Books by Mail, or having collections that reflect the interests of what people come in to look for. We work for the public and we are always working hard to respond to the public’s needs.”