ChiRP! and Beyond: What’s Next for Cary Library?
In March 2024 ChiRP! passed a major milestone when Town Meeting appropriated $4 million of the estimated $5.5 million needed to fund the project. “That was a really exciting night at Town Meeting!” said Stembridge. Town Meeting members’ overwhelming support for the project reflected “a real love for the library,” she said, especially at a time when many capital projects are competing for limited municipal funding.
The remaining $1.5 million will come from private sources: $750,000 from the Cary Memorial Library Trust, an endowment fund, and $750,000 from the Cary Library Foundation (CLF.) Founded in 1999 as the official organization for accepting private donations, CLF has a record of running successful capital campaigns. Executive Director Mary Ellen Ringo reports that at the time of writing, CLF has raised $650,000 for ChiRP!
On the Move
With funding in place, the Department of Public Facilities (DPF) will put the project out to bid according to the open public bidding process required by Massachusetts law, and once bids come in around mid to late June, DPF will hire a contractor and work will start on July 1.
“It’s a very tight timeline,” Stembridge acknowledged, “but we’ve been preparing for that.” The first few weeks of July will be challenging, she said, as the lower level will close to the public for the duration of construction. For the first a couple of weeks, she said, staff based on the lower level will be preparing to move over two thirds of the 75,000 items in the children’s and teen collections up to the main level.
“We heard loud and clear from parents that having access to materials during this construction project needed to be a priority,” said Stembridge, “so we’re going to be packing our kids’ and teen collections into every available space we can find.” She estimated that around 70 percent of those collections will stay in the building, with the remainder being moved to offsite storage. Youth services staff will migrate upstairs, and the bibliographic services team, the staff who buy and process new additions to the collections, will decamp to Cary Hall.
Taking an entire floor offline will have “a huge impact throughout the building,” Stembridge said. “The whole lower level is having new HVAC put in, which means taking out ceilings in every room – so we can’t make parts of the lower level available, for safety reasons,” she explained.
Adventures Around Town and Beyond
The good news is that in the fall, once the new temporary configuration is established, in- person children’s and youth programming will start again. In partnership with Lexington Community Center, and town organizations including Lex Farm, children’s and teens’ activities will be popping up all over town, and families will receive updated information on the website and through other communications.
“Our adult programming will be largely virtual, because we will not have access to any of our programming spaces,” Stembridge said. “Thankfully, one of the lessons of the pandemic was how to shift on the fly,” she said, “and we’re able to go back to that model for this year.”
“One really wonderful thing about being part of the Minuteman Library Network is that people can use their Cary Library card at any Minuteman library,” said Stembridge. Cary staff have been in touch with colleagues at libraries in neighboring towns, alerting them to the likely influx of Lexington families, so staff in Bedford, Belmont, Arlington, Waltham, and Concord look forward to welcoming new visitors over the summer and into fall.
Stembridge saluted the dedication and creativity of the entire library staff over the extended preparation period for ChiRP! “We have a really, really first-rate library staff,” she said. “And for the past year,” she noted, “not only have they been delivering the services that our residents expect and rely on, but they’ve been planning for this project, which includes designing a new space, staging a major move, and re-imagining how we’re going to offer services in our new configuration, including offsite and virtually.”
“We recognize that changes in access to favorite spaces, services, and collections will be difficult. We hope that the community will see that we’re doing our best to provide as much as we can during the disruption,” said Stembridge. Looking ahead, she said, “this project is overdue and we look forward to the improved accessibility, security and flexibility that the renovation will bring.”
Embracing Change
Now in her thirteenth year as Director of Cary Library, Stembridge has always championed change that reflects the needs of the community. The 2016 Transformative Spaces project, for example, gave Cary its popular Teen Room, Idea Wall, Library of Things and Cary Commons, and enhanced the World Languages Collections.
Perhaps Stembridge’s openness to change partly reflects the timeline of her professional career, that started in 1992 “at a time of major upheaval in the ways that technology and information were being accessed and utilized by people.” In the days of dial-up internet, she recalled, libraries “were often the place where people came for access to the internet when they didn’t have it at home.” In one of her early jobs as an internet librarian in Oregon, she taught patrons how to trouble-shoot their computers, and how to use the early graphical internet browsers. “Now we’re in a world where people have more bandwidth in their pocket than they know what to do with,” she said.
There have always been doomsayers predicting that this or that technology will be the death of public libraries, Stembridge acknowledged. “It was the internet, then it was ebooks, then it was iPhones and now it’s artificial intelligence (AI),” she said. Given the constantly evolving technological environment, she said, it’s only logical that the services libraries provide, and the way they provide them will change. “I think that the best libraries are always the ones looking outward into their communities to see what is valued and needed, and then figuring out how to provide that,” she said.
Stembridge sees a crucial role for librarians in helping people navigate the information deluge amplified by AI. “One of the big advantages that reference librarians have over Google is that it’s our work to keep abreast of where information comes from, how it’s manipulated, and where you can find reputable information,” she said.
Her own explorations of AI range from the pragmatic – proof-reading, writing style tips – to the playful. She values Perplexity (perplexity.ai) for citing its sources, and prompted ChatGPT to write “a really wonderful outline for ChiRP! the Musical, complete with song titles and lyrics.”
“We’re continuing to grow our knowledge of AI to see how it can save us time and help us to do our work in productive and more enjoyable ways,” said Stembridge. At the same time, she acknowledged: “We’re also wary of how it will impact the work of information professionals – we live in interesting times!”
Libraries Against Loneliness?
With the rise of the internet and widely-available digital content, as libraries have shifted from being mainly warehouses for physical materials, the role of librarians has also changed, said Stembridge. From being gatekeepers of those materials, they have evolved into curators “not only of materials, but of experiences and opportunities to gather and learn together.”
“It’s apparent that a lack of human connection in people’s lives is a huge challenge for our world,” said Stembridge. “We have all these platforms where we can put out our message, but we’re not spending as much time in community with one another, being genuinely curious and open to one another,” she said.
Always thinking ahead, Stembridge said that as the library moves beyond the ChiRP! project, she sees a chance to reassess its partnerships with community members. “In Lexington there are so many community organizations that are doing more programming,” she said. Since the Community Center opened in July 2015, for example, it has become a primary space for programs, and with access to Zoom and similar platforms, “literally anyone can run a program.”
The challenge for the library in this changing environment, said Stembridge, “is to continue to focus on our strengths, and do our best work on behalf of the community.” In late fall or early 2025, she said, she and her team will start work on a new Strategic Plan to plot their direction for the next three years. A key part will be reaching out to community groups to hear what they would like to see from their ever-evolving library. Whatever the future holds, one thing is clear, said Stembridge: “Collaboration and engagement with one another will be at the center of what we do.”
For full information about ChiRP! and projected impacts to services, visit the library’s website: carylibrary.org/chirp
Cary Library Director Koren Stembridge
Koren Stembridge has spent the past 30+ years working in small, medium, and large public libraries. She started her career as a Teen Librarian, spent several years as a Reference and Internet Services Librarian in Oregon, and has more than 20 years’ experience as a library director, including stints at Marston Mills Public Library and Osterville Village Library on Cape Cod. Before coming to Lexington in 2011, she spent six years at the Boston Public Library – finishing her tenure there as Director of Partnerships and Communications. She was selected as one of Library Journal’s “Movers and Shakers” and awarded the Boston Municipal Research Bureau’s “Shattuck” award for public service.
She holds degrees from The University of Chicago and from Clarion University’s School of Library and Information Science.