Each month, we profile a library. Large, small, urban, rural, post-modern, quaint or neo-classic; do you have a library that you love? Tell us about it. This month Barbara Lloyd McMichael writes about the many challenges facing rural libraries, including the fiery destruction of the Malden Library Branch.
Rural libraries face adversity, promote inclusion
Libraries We Love:
Whitman County Rural Library District, Colfax, WA
The Palouse is a fabled landscape in eastern Washington State. It features ancient buttes, basalt-lined coulees, and photogenic rolling hills that have been tamed into the nation’s most productive farmland for wheat and legumes.
Situated squarely within the Palouse, Whitman County is home to one college town (Pullman, population 35,000); the county seat (Colfax, population 2,900); and a scattering of don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-them hamlets situated at the junction of county roads or tucked into narrow valleys.
These are the kinds of towns that post photo-banners of their half-dozen high school graduates alongside the American flags on the lampposts down Main Street. But as big-hearted as the community pride may be, many of these rural towns are shrinking. Empty storefronts tell the tale. The gas station is boarded up. There’s no longer a grocery store or a pharmacy, a doctor’s office or an insurance agency.
But one constant remains in these little towns: the public library.
For the last several years, the Whitman County Rural Library District (WCL), based in Colfax, has run 13 other branch libraries throughout the 2200 square mile county – in Albion, Colton, Endicott, Farmington, Garfield, LaCrosse, Malden, Oakesdale, Palouse, Rosalia, St. John, Tekoa and Uniontown – towns that are home to fewer than 500 people on average.
Under the leadership of director Kristie Kirkpatrick, who has been with WCL for 33 years, the library system has been committed to providing service to these small towns. And in turn, the townsfolk in each of those communities have steadfastly continued to pony up the funding to keep their branch libraries in operation.
Kirkpatrick sat down recently to talk about her work. “We do just about everything big libraries do – and we really know our patrons,” she said.
Library services include check-out of books and books on tape (which are especially popular during harvest season, when farmers listen to the tapes in the cabs of their combines), story time for kids, book clubs, computer access and tutorials, classes of all kinds, vaccination clinics during flu season and well-attended voter forums during election season.
Kristie Kirkpatrick and Kylie Fullmer - outgoing and incoming directors of the Whitman County Rural Library District.