Food for Thought: Times change, so does Elkhart library

ELKHART — If you’ve thought of public libraries as dusty, nearly empty places, as a thing of the past, you can stop.

Just stop.

What’s actually happening is they’re being reshaped for the next generation. The new generation of librarians is able to show how to use an iPad and how to find something on microfilm (though now even those machines have big LED screens).

At the Elkhart Public Library, Katrina Maust mines data to help determine what books should stay in the collection and which ones should go to make room for others. Software called Collection HQ can track how many times a book has been checked out and issue a “grubby report” on when it may be worn out or need replacing.

Maust is a reference librarian who returned to the community after getting a master’s degree of library and information and services at Syracuse University. Her degree in data science means that she geeks out over crafting colorful reports that help her and others meet the changing needs of patrons.

In this era of constantly changing technology, the public library still stands as a key place in the community. Tax dollars are spent to allow every resident of a geographic area to access information. We think of that as books, but libraries have always been much more than the quiet place where one goes to borrow a bit of printed paper.

More people are using the meeting and conference rooms available for free.

“That’s where libraries are moving,” Maust said. “They’re civic centers. They’re meeting spaces.”

The print reference collection is shrinking, said Mary Beth Schlabach, head of that department for EPL. More is available online. Yet what she, Maust and others on their team are finding is that less can be more.

One of Maust’s tasks recently has been going through the massive cookbook collection at the library. Using both data and a desire to have a well-rounded selection, she’s pulling books from the shelves and sending them to the basement where Friends of the Library prepare them for sale. On May 3, hundreds of food books will be offered to the public for $1 each, less if they’re not hardcover.

“This is one of our most heavily used sections,” Maust said. “They’re just so pretty, too.”

She lingers over a book on the Yucatan, an area of Mexico where she once lived with her family. In another book, she shows a picture of a gorgeous beet dish.

Though the books on Russian cooking aren’t as pretty and don’t get taken home much, she keeps them in the collection.

“You want to make sure you have something,” she said.

The shelves, instead of being packed floor to ceiling, now have space and have been adjusted to accommodate shorter cooks. The additional space and light actually makes it easier to find a book, Schlabach said.

Other sections are also getting makeovers. Critical literary reviews and travel books aren’t needed in print form as they were in the past.

Schlabach’s goal is to maintain the tradition of Elkhart Public Library.

“This library has been a superb library for decades and decades,” she said.

To remain that, they need to adapt, she said.

That means being comfortable with the Zinio app that allows users in Elkhart and Goshen to read magazines on tablets or phones. It means helping people use Hoopla and Overdrive, two more apps that give access to e-books, audiobooks and videos. Every student in Concord and Elkhart schools, even if they live outside the townships that fund the library, gets an e-card giving access to online resources.

“We’ve had online resources for quite some time,” Schlabach said. “How do we tell the community we have them?”

The library offers online legal resources and is planning a summer series to help people learn about law. Another event on the summer eclipse is in the works.

As I looked over the cookbooks in the basement being prepared for sale, it felt like I was among old friends. I recognized some I’d checked out years ago. Some are copies of books already on my shelf at home. A few went home with me — with no due date.

I went home heartened by Maust, Schlabach and the others at the library eagerly adapting to cultural change to make this library a welcoming, vibrant space with helpful people and technology that expands beyond what I would have known without them.

Marshall V. King is a freelance writer and photographer who has worked in Elkhart County as a journalist for more than 20 years. You can read his Dining a la King column in The Tribune on Fridays.