The Road to Annual: Monday, June 10
I drove from Columbia to St. Louis to pick up my laptop and then drove back to Columbia. Happy to get “forgot my laptop” out of the way!
We met Erin Magner and Angela Scott at the entrance of Daniel Boone Regional Library in Columbia, Missouri, and they ushered us inside to get set up to interview a number of community partners. Libraries are fantastic collaborators, building connections between organizations that expand the power and reach of everyone. We talked with Michael Cox, a longtime volunteer with DBRL’s Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program. Community members are trained by the IRS to serve as tax preparers, working one-on-one with patrons to file relevant paperwork. Cox told us that DBRL volunteers processed 2400 returns this year, putting an estimated $600,000 back in the pockets of low income residents. “The library provides everything,” Cox said. “The space, the computers, the light, the heat. We couldn’t do it without the library.” Community leaders from the League of Women Voters, Children’s Grove, and Parents as Teachers shared their own stories of the essential role the library plays in their work.
Partnerships like these rely on the librarians who make them go, and we wanted to capture the energy DBRL staff members bring to their work. Megan Durham and Angela Scott gave us a tour of the library. Sarah Howard described the ways youth services have changed in her decades at DBRL. Megan also discussed her work as part of the bargaining team for the library union’s first contract. Even when the subject was a serious one, there was a lot of laughter.
We were also lucky to record with Otter Bowman, public services librarian and immediate past-president of the Missouri Library Association. Like Tom Bober at the Missouri Association of School Librarians, Bowman served the association during an extraordinarily challenging time. We learned about mobilization campaigns mounted by MLA to push against the most harmful elements of state policies and legislative attempts to cut state aid for libraries. Stories of how we organize effectively under difficult circumstances are essential, and we were glad to have Bowman’s on video. We’ll remember.
Filming wrapped, and we headed west to Oak Grove, Missouri, en route to the next library on our list.
Mileage: 350
Soundtrack: I-70, laughter
Filmmaker Nikita Carpenter, Jr. documents our tour of the Daniel Boone Regional Library.
A view of the stacks from the mezzanine at Daniel Boone Regional Library.
From left, Otter Bowman, Emily Drabinski, and Megan Durham.
