POTTSBORO, Texas – In this North Texas town of about 2,600 full-time residents, the public library has earned $1.75 million in grants that have almost nothing to do with books.Government and philanthropic dollars have been flowing into the community near the Oklahoma border for the past eight years for things like setting up a well-equipped room for private telehealth doctor visits, outfitting the Pottsboro Area Library with gaming computers for an esports program and expanding access to technology with internet service, free devices and employees who can teach residents new skills.
And if library director Dianne Connery had her way, she’d secure private funding for a new building with space for an emergency operations center, community meeting/event space, technology learning space – and even books. The library recently was turned down on a grant application for $15 million to pay for that, but Connery is still looking for some private funding to make it happen.
Beyond tradition
Across the country, libraries are expanding to new services that go well beyond books to meet complex needs of their communities. New programs range from telehealth facilities to giving internet access in rural areas that can directly affect quality of life. Young and old library patrons are introduced to new technology with innovative programs to help develop new life-changing skills.
Henry Stokes of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission in Austin said libraries are trying to meet the needs of their communities any way they can.
“They are social infrastructure that is tied directly to a community’s resilience,” said Stokes, whose agency has provided grant funds to the Pottsboro library. “Traditionally, we think of libraries as connecting people to information, ideas and resources, but they’re also connecting people in a community with each other in a shared space, all to foster human relationships. Libraries put people first, responding directly to their current needs.”
Innovative library services like those in Pottsboro help connect people and are tied directly to the community’s quality of life: educational attainment, household income, number of jobs, health and wellness, Stokes said. “Problems can be addressed, hardships endured together – with the community coming out stronger,” said Stokes, TSLAC’s broadband technology coordinator.
Librarian Connery, 64, has never been held back by traditional or nostalgic ideas about what a library can be.
“I saw it as such a blank slate. It was such an opportunity. I could see the potential,” she said during an August interview in a library multipurpose room with 10 gaming computers, a 3D printer, virtual reality headsets, a few meeting tables and various projects in the works. Two school-age boys played a lively Roblox game nearby without ever getting a suggestion that they keep their enthusiasm quiet.
Connery moved to Pottsboro in 2010 after a career in Plano as a corporate trainer, gerontologist and entrepreneur, planning to take it easy. A friend invited her to a library board meeting where she heard about plans to close the volunteer-run facility in 14 months. Even though the library had no city funding then and ran on the labor of volunteers and special event fundraising, she couldn’t stand the thought of it shutting down. She became library board president in 2011 and went to work to save it.
Why, you might ask, does a library in a rural retirement community need an “emergency operations center”? You only need to look back to the “Big Freeze” of February 2021 to understand. Texans will remember that a winter storm killed at least 246 people (most with hypothermia) when an arctic blast knocked out power to much of the state, froze water pipes and wreaked havoc – all during the height of the COVID pandemic. In tiny Pottsboro, the library became an important community hub – a place to get water for those who didn’t have it and a place to share water for those who did.
That was just the start of it for the library that stayed open during the pandemic.Connery and fellow volunteers coordinated those connections and literally knocked on doors of local apartments, offering water to those who didn’t have it. People who couldn’t flush their toilets or make a baby bottle got water delivered to their homes in some instances.“That’s something they don’t teach you when you’re getting your MLS (master’s degree in library science),” Connery said, recalling that experience. She has an MLS in library and information science from Texas Woman’s University and a master in science degree in gerontology from the University of North Texas.
They set up portable restrooms on library property, facilitated a free hot meal giveaway with a local restaurant and used social media to connect people with needs to people with solutions.A case study about the disaster on the Rural Health Information Hub goes into great detail about how effectively the library implemented a community-coordinated response and followed that with a community debriefing and efforts to expand such a collaborative response for future events.
This spring, the Pottsboro library was named one of the 30 finalists for the National Medal for Museum and Library Service. It was the only library in Texas to get that designation from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.Connery’s strategy is to “break the nostalgic view of what a library is.”
Community service
“We’re really big on community service and partnerships,” she said.Some of Pottsboro’s $1.75 million in grants in the past eight years came in small chunks. Someone donated $2,000 for the library to put doors between the gaming room and the room with the books. Someone else donated $1,500 for nice high-back chairs for each of the 10 gaming computers for the esports program that helped develop digital skills for students. A woman heard Connery talk about offering a free lunch and snacks for kids this summer and gave her a check for $17,500 to keep it going. When the air conditioner at the library broke down, $18,000 was raised for a new HVAC system within days.
In 2017, the library launched its “Library of Things” with a $10,000 donation from a local family, no strings attached except a request to do something meaningful with the money. With a Pottsboro library card, residents can go to the metal storage building in the library parking lot and check out everything from a bike, posthole digger, sewing machine or carpet cleaner to a wheelchair, pickleball set, ice cream maker, shovel, laptop computer or camera – all for free.
A Library of Seeds supports local home gardeners. The collection of free fruit and vegetable seeds donated by seed companies became popular during the pandemic when people started gardens to try to deal with food insecurity and the supply chain disruptions. The library offered classes in canning and cooking.
The library’s newest grant is from the Emergency Connectivity Fund Program administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company for $549,500 to make possible free internet connections for 500 families in Grayson County through June 2024, or longer if Congress approves funding.
The library’s latest offering will launch Oct. 3 when Senior Tech Day introduces a virtual reality program with a company called MyndVR that targets the senior population with VR headsets for “immersive therapeutics solutions” for age-related health challenges such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, isolation and depression. As one example of its capability, Connery pointed to the travel-oriented content that can take seniors to places they always wanted to go without the challenges of actual travel.
“People want to be part of something that’s exciting and positive,” Connery said. “We could get rid of all our books, and a few people would be upset, but not a lot.”
First in the nation
In the midst of the pandemic with a $20,000 federal grant from the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM), Pottsboro became the first in the nation to open a dedicated telehealth room in a library in January 2021. They converted a 10-by-12 storage room to a private telehealth room with a computer, fast internet connection and good lighting. The room can be accessed through a separate entrance, a door labeled on the outside with big letters spelling out HEALTH. The University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth coordinates the schedule for visits that include illnesses, small injuries or chronic diseases like diabetes or high blood pressure. Counseling sessions can also be booked there – any kind of health-related appointment. The room includes a scale, blood pressure monitor and other resources.
That telehealth idea came to Connery after she got a request from a woman who needed a place with a computer and internet to talk to a doctor about her MRI results – somewhere outside the doctor’s office. Another request for help came from a frustrated veteran who contacted the library because he couldn’t get through on the phone to his pharmacy for a prescription refill request after making dozens of calls. Connery saw the need for better access to health care and applied for the grant as a pilot project. She was a pioneer in creating such a dedicated library space and worked with SaferCare Texas to make sure the space had all the necessary considerations for proper ventilation, privacy, COVID protocols and disinfecting between visits.
Pottsboro has no doctor offices, Connery said, so residents sometimes head south toward Dallas, 90 miles away, for medical care, if they can. The closest hospital is 30 minutes away. Grayson County is poor, but more fortunate than 77 counties in Texas that have no hospital. Connery said her telehealth room is one way to better serve residents without internet access or privacy at home for a talk with a doctor. It also serves summer residents when the Pottsboro area population near Lake Texoma swells to about 10,000 with people from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex visiting their weekend lake homes.
Digital navigator
One of the library’s biggest grants came from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance that worked to create a National Digital Navigator Corps – people who can help connect residents to the internet with devices and digital skills as part of a new Google.org program. A $350,000 grant funded a full-time digital navigator for several years who teaches classes and meets one-on-one with local residents to teach everything from setting up a new phone, computer or printer to making Facetime calls or having Zoom meetings with the grandkids. He helps people get online and navigate websites, makes house calls and helps recover forgotten passwords.
Mark Revolinski, 60, a retired telecommunications executive at Nokia from Wisconsin, is the library’s full-time digital navigator. He moved to Pottsboro two years ago to be near his grandkids. As of August, he had seen 170 clients who are mostly in their 60s, 70s or 80s.
“They’re leery at first and expect it to cost something, but it’s free,” he said in a Zoom interview. He even makes house calls to do things like set up a printer or help someone recover a forgotten password. He talks to people in an assisted living center with a periodic “Technology with Mark” session, but he’ll also go room to room to take care of individual needs.
Revolinski explains his approach to the job, saying, “Be a person first. Get to know them and get comfortable. Then they don’t feel bad. There are no dumb questions.” He often teaches people who have no technology skills.
He helped an 84-year-old man with his dating app. The man was getting contacted by young women in other countries, so Revolinski changed him to a Baptist dating site for older people, where he’s looking for companionship.
“People walk out and say, ‘Finally, I get it. I can do something.’”
Revolinski said his type of job is in its infancy across the country, and people are starting to understand what a digital navigator is. A big banner on the front of the Pottsboro library building advertises his free services. The same message has been on billboards, door hangers and local TV ads.
“I feel blessed to be able to do this,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of people doing the job in Texas.” He said he feels fortunate to get to work with Connery, who thinks outside the box. “She inspires and motivates me.”“We don’t have a lot of books,” he said about his library.
“We have a lot of technology.”
Libraries as conveners
While the Pottsboro Area Library is rolling out program after program to serve its community in a great variety of ways, Connery is also involved in research to build more resilient communities. Earlier this year, she worked with Texas State University professor Elizabeth K. Eger, who is studying “libraries as conveners” through a project called COPEWELL. That stands for the Composite of Post Event Well-Being, a framework to foster community resilience and research networks that was developed by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Delaware with funding by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Pottsboro Area Library along with the Lee-Bardwell Library in Gladewater were chosen for participate in the research. The library was involved in two focus group meetings this spring with community stakeholders, with individual participant follow-up sessions to talk about community perceptions of resiliency.
Eger, who is a fellow with the Translational Health Research Center and an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies, calls library directors assets to their communities.
“They’re doing such innovative and exciting planning to make the libraries a community center and place for everyone,” Eger said. “That’s something I know librarians are doing across the state.”
Eger added, “I absolutely think that librarians are great persons to do this convening, and they may need help and support from their other community members to enact these kinds of plans and conversations.”
She said she is happy to “be a footnote” to Connery’s work in Pottsboro, where the library director is using her COPEWELL experience with community members in support of her newest grant proposals.
“Libraries are great at being conveners,” said Connery. A big cross-section of the community now uses the library. “Librarians are known to be non-judgmental. They respect privacy,” she said.
Connery and her project manager, Renee Nichols, don’t get paid by the library. They’re paid by grants. The city’s $39,000 library budget just covers one paid employee, the library manager. A small portion of grant funding helps with the library’s operational costs.
“It’s a safe space for seniors and the kids – both ends of the spectrum – for different reasons,” said Nichols, a retiree who worked in retail before moving to Pottsboro and joining Connery.
“Without a library, people wouldn’t be as hopeful,” Connery said. “We really are the beacon.”
“In the end, it isn’t about the technology,” she said. “It’s about the humans.”
Terry Bertling teaches journalism at Texas State University and is the lead reporter for Texas Community Health News. TCHN stories, reports and data visualizations are provided free to Texas newsrooms.
