Teton County Library hooked us up

When I set out for this cross-country trip, my plan was to visit a bunch of libraries along the way (tag: road trip), admire and promote their unique community-centered practices, and share photos as I go. It has been interesting. I haven’t blogged about even a third of the libraries I’ve dropped by, mostly because of connectivity issues (no interwebs when camping). I can testify now, it is true, American libraries really do differ greatly from town to town, state to state, and region to region. I’ve ranted quite a bit over the past few years about community-centered and user-centered design principles, and it’s funny to look around and see how much of that is really happening concurrently and unconsciously along side the heady, academic talk of such practices.

To the point: I had a great library patron experience in Jackson, Wyoming the other day. Rather than coming in as some kind of outsider, some kind of bloggy library critic, I visited the Teton County Library as a patron with some real questions. My girlfriend and I had backpacked +/- 25 miles in Grand Teton National Park and had encountered everything from easily identifiable columbine and lupine, moose and marmots to quite a few more unusual plants and animals along the trail. As a temporarily unemployed librarian on a limited budget traveling cross-country, it should come as no surprise that I didn’t want to buy every field guide available for every region along the road. After a brief tour around the library, I settled down with a pile of books and sorted out what was what.

I don’t want to ignore innovative practices at Teton County Library in any way with this post. Please look around their well-designed website, browse the area about their solar panels, the green building, and its sustainable operations. Pay mind to the fact that there is an electric car workshop right around the corner, they’ve been doing claymation workshops for summer reading (and that kids are reading a TON of books there). Look at all of that stuff. Myself, I just got caught up in the realization that as a traveler of the USA, public libraries are a piece of infrastructure that is invaluable, not replicated by any other service, and they are truly hyperlocal. They may be nodes or hubs of connectivity, but they retain local identity. There is NO OTHER WAY to get the kind of free local information I got at the Teton County Library. Its important to recognize that and consider it as a core piece of your library’s service delivery.

Just to hammer the point home: as travelers, we were referred to the Teton County Library by a 2 year old “Road Trip USA” travel guide purchased for $1 at the Skokie Public Library bookstore. The Teton County Library is such a valued resource that travel books write about it. Shouldn’t that be something every neighborhood library aspires to?

In Bozeman, Montana now- another great library town. Check back soon!