Westport Library: The Community Is The Collection

Bill Harmer is in his 10th year as director of the Westport Library. In his new Substack, “The Civic Library.” he offers personal reflections on public libraries, civic life, leadership, culture, and the role public institutions can still play in helping communities learn, gather and belong.

He began with this piece. It explains the belief that has shaped his entire career: that a library is not ultimately defined by its building, but by the promise it makes to the people it serves.

It is thoughtful, inspiring and important. “06880” asked Bill for permission to repost it here.

Port Huron, Michigan, a blue-collar border town wedged against Canada, is where I grew up. Lake Huron was present from the beginning. Hockey was, too.

My dad and I spent many Saturday mornings outside before sunrise, carrying hockey equipment through the cold for a seven o’clock game. Afterward, we had a ritual. We would get Coney Island hot dogs with chili, mustard, and onions from the place across from the rink, then cross the street to the Carnegie Library.

The building was not especially impressive. It was simple, unassuming, and made of brick. It looked more like a one-room schoolhouse than a cathedral of learning.

But it felt enormous to me.

Carnegie Library, Port Huron, Michigan

I remember the quiet when we walked in. The smell of old paper. The sense that I could move around without anyone asking why I was there.

Getting my first library card felt like a huge deal. That card set me free. I could not drive yet, but it took me places. I did not need a teacher or parent to tell me what to read. I could browse the stacks, pick up whatever caught my attention, and decide for myself what I wanted to learn.

That was my first understanding of what a library could be.

Not a building. A promise.

A promise that knowledge does not belong only to those who can afford it. A promise that everyone should have a place to learn, discover, imagine, and begin again. A promise that a community is stronger when people have somewhere to gather without having to buy something, prove something, or already know where they are going.

Years later, when I became the director of a public library, that memory stayed with me. It was more than a childhood recollection. It became a leadership principle.

Bill Harmer (Photo/Ryan Allen)

A library is not defined by its walls, its square footage, its circulation statistics, or even its collection. It is defined by the public promise it keeps.

Too often, public libraries describe themselves in terms that are smaller than the work itself. We talk about books, programs, databases, meeting rooms, Wi-Fi, storytimes, and summer reading. All of that matters. Books matter. Access matters.

But we sell the library short when that is all we say.

Today’s library is not simply a place where people come to check things out. It is one of the few remaining public places where people can enter freely, spend time, ask questions, run into a neighbor, hear an unexpected idea, make something new, or sit quietly because they need somewhere to be.

Access matters, but it is not the same as belonging.

A door can be open and people can still wonder whether the place is meant for them.

We can do more than open the door.

The Westport Library’s doors are open many hours a day. (Photo/Michael Chait)

When I came to The Westport Library in 2015, I was hired in part to lead what became known as the Transformation Project, a $21 million renovation and capital campaign. We reconsidered nearly every part of the building, and the new Library opened in 2019.

But the work was never simply about construction.

The harder question was what all that space should make possible.

The building had to do more than look better. It had to reflect the creative energy of the community around it and give that energy somewhere to go.

That question became the center of the work.

We removed walls and opened sightlines. We brought in light. A conventional reading room became a public forum where people could gather, listen, debate, study, perform, celebrate, and sometimes grieve. We created Verso Studios, a media production center where people could record music, make films and podcasts, and learn the tools of modern storytelling. We also built spaces for education, conversation, and making things.

The point was not the rooms themselves. The point was what could happen inside them.

A child could browse a picture book. A teenager could record a podcast. A filmmaker could edit a documentary. An author could speak to a full room. A retired resident could take a class and discover something new about the world or about themselves.

I do not believe that is mission drift.

I believe it is the mission coming fully into life.

The public library has always been one of the few institutions in American life where people are welcomed without a transaction. There is no purchase required. No membership fee. No explanation needed.

You simply enter.

That feels more radical now than it did when I was a kid.

Westport Library patrons feel at home throughout the building — including the innovative Trefz Forum.

Public life has become more commercial, more digital, and more divided. Many of the places where people once gathered now require a purchase, an invitation, or a password.

The library remains open.

But that does not happen by accident. The promise has to be protected. It also has to stretch.

Some people worry that innovation will cause libraries to lose their way. I think the greater danger is confusing old methods with enduring values.

The card catalog became a search engine. The reading room became a public forum. The study carrel became a podcast booth. None of that abandoned the mission. It allowed the mission to keep moving.

The best innovation does not take us away from the library’s original promise. It brings us back to it.

One of my deepest beliefs is that the community itself is the collection.

Every town is full of people who know things.

Artists, teachers, business owners, veterans, scientists, musicians, parents, elders, tradespeople, and people carrying hard-earned wisdom they may never have thought of as knowledge worth sharing.

They know how to repair, write, cook, build, teach, survive, and imagine.

Books matter, but knowledge does not live only in books. It also lives in people.

Westport TV personalities like Alisyn Camerota and Dave Briggs regularly donate their time to the Westport Library.

The library’s work is not simply to distribute information. It is to help knowledge move.

That changes the role of the librarian.

A librarian still helps someone find the book. But the work can also mean finding the teacher, the tool, the room, the workshop, the person, or the courage to take the next step.

The librarian becomes a convener, a host, an interpreter, a connector, a teacher, an advocate, and sometimes a witness.

I resist narrow definitions of what a library is allowed to be.

A teaching kitchen can expand literacy into food, health, culture, and family life. A media studio can give people access to the tools of modern storytelling. A music or literary festival can place the library at the center of a community’s cultural life. A room built for civil discourse can help neighbors practice the difficult work of listening to one another.

That is not abandoning the mission.

That is taking the mission seriously.

Bringing artists like Wyclef Jean — and connecting them to audiences — is one of the Westport Library’s many missions. (Photo/Kerry Long)

Public libraries are not nice extras. They are part of the infrastructure a community needs in order to learn, adapt, create, and remain human.

We have simply grown too accustomed to describing the work modestly.

Of course, the work is not always inspiring.

Anyone who has spent time leading a public library knows this.

There are budgets to fight for and balance, boards to work with, buildings to maintain, staff cultures to nurture, political pressures to navigate, patrons in crisis, public criticism, personal fatigue, and plenty of days when the mission feels buried under email.

Westport Library

I have wanted to quit more than a few times.

Not because I stopped believing in libraries. Often, it was because I believed in them so much that the gap between what they could be and what the work demanded felt impossible to close.

Leadership in a public library can be creative, joyful, and full of purpose. It can also be bruising, isolating, and misunderstood.

Still, something keeps bringing me back.

A child laughing during storytime. A teenager recording a song in the studio. A donor realizing that a gift can make something possible for people they may never meet. A packed room listening carefully during a difficult conversation. A person walking through the door without knowing exactly what they need, only that they need somewhere to go.

That is what keeps me in the work.

Because the library is not the building.

The building matters. Design matters. Beauty matters. Light, sound, furniture, technology, and flow all matter. They tell people what kind of place they have entered. They can intimidate or invite. They can open possibility or quietly shut it down.

But the building is not the promise.

The promise is deeper.

It is the promise that a person can walk through the door without having everything figured out. They may find a book, a class, a conversation, a place to sit, or someone willing to help.

Sometimes the library gives people information. Sometimes it gives them confidence. Sometimes it simply interrupts a lonely afternoon.

None of that is small.

Everyone can find a place at the Westport Library. This is the view from the children’s section. (Photo/Collette Winn)

That was the promise I first felt as a boy in skates and a winter coat, wandering the stacks after a hockey game.

I have spent my career trying to understand that promise, build around it, defend it, and extend it.

Public libraries must keep making that promise now.

Nostalgia will not save the public library.

Purpose will.

That is not a building.

It is a civic promise.

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