While most businesses have closed up shop or have been torn down, the Skokie Public Library has stayed in the heart of downtown Skokie since 1941 but has been in business is some sort of form since 1929. The library’s exact mission statement is “For personal growth and community development.” That is exactly what its been doing since its inception.
“The library is a resource for the community and we really promote this idea of community engagement and lifelong learning,” Richard Kong, Deputy Director of the Skokie Public Library said.” We want to see our community thrive, that’s the key for us. That were having a good positive impact on our community and helping people and that we know we’re doing our job.”
Kong said that the library has a strong emphasis in engaging with the community. They host many events and programs to help the community like helping with all the schools in the area, different immigrant populations and other community organizations. Some of their goals are to trying to serve and find out what their needs are and serve them better and to strengthen existing ties or creating new ties.
“The community is totally the ones that support the library,” Ron Olberman a librarian of youth services said. So it’s a two way relationship between the community and library.
The Skokie library does offer more than most libraries with its huge book collections for both nonfiction and fiction, movies, TV shows, audio books, music CDs, and is one of the only few to have video games for all the platforms even the new ones. Because it offers more than most libraries it gets traffic from people from all over Illinois.
“We offer a lot here; obviously we offer a huge a huge collection in terms of books music movies and a lot of other collections. We offer e-books and other digital content,” Kong said. “We are just launching very soon a digital platform that will give ability for people to listen to music, watch movies and stream stuff on their mobile devices or laptops. We also have a wide range of services for all ages for kids, teens, young adults, and older adults. We offer a lot of events in terms of learning experiences even computer and technology classes and one on one opportunities. We try to offer whatever people need in terms of learning.”
“One of the nice things about the Skokie library is that we have a much wider range of materials than the surrounding communities do,” Julie Marks a reader services librarian said. “And as a result we have lots of patrons who come from other libraries to enjoy the materials we have here in our building.”
She went on to say that other nice things about the library is “That it’s very diverse and as of a result they provide materials for a large numbers of languages and all different types of programs and all free and you can’t do anything better then free.”
Marks also said, “The community in Skokie kept up very well with the building itself, and the employee and that the patrons as well are big a part of it. If we didn’t have the patrons we wouldn’t have the library.”
Most people don’t know what goes on in a library except from what they see when they are there but there is a lot more that goes into it than what we expect. “A common misunderstanding on what library work is that we sit in the back and read novels all day,” Kong said. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. Anything you can imagine it’s a full organization like other organizations. We have maintenance, security staff, communications and marketing, human resources, processing and cataloging materials so they can come out for the public to use, IT staff, public service staff, director to a page or shelfer. We have a wide range of jobs at the library and different types of work that people do. It’s a great place to work a lot of great people work here, a lot of people are dedicated to public service. Lot of smart and intelligent people with creative ideas and it’s a great place to work.”
The library isn’t just good in the eyes of it workers, it was recognized with the National Medal for Museum and Library Service in 2008. It also has been visited by all the important government officials in the state and even president Barrack Obama has visited and couldn’t deny it was well run.
“One of the reasons the library is great is because of the incredible staff that works at the library with me and unbelievable resources it has for the community,” Olberman said. “I obviously love working at the Skokie Public Library, I’ve worked here for 38 years.”
“My favorite part about working at the library these 11 years is being able to help people get the materials they want and need,” Marks said.