ATHABASCA – Libraries wear a lot of hats in small towns — outside of the obvious features, like providing books or DVDs to patrons, they can help fill out forms, print 3D designs, or just serve as a place to step in from the rain.
The Athabasca Public Library board chair, Colleen Powell, stopped off at the Athabasca County council meeting Feb. 27 to discuss the work the Alice B. Donahue Library and Archives is doing in the community, and to clear up some misconceptions around how the organization works and who’s responsible for it.
“Obviously, we loan physical and electronic resources; people come in mostly from the county for printing and scanning,” said Powell.
“We’re more than just books; I use the library through e-resources. Once I took a library book back 15 years out of date I thought maybe I shouldn’t do this anymore.”
In total, the library circulated just over 35,000 items amongst its 14,100 visitors, a number that includes repeat visitors. As of Dec. 31, 2024, the library had 1,202 cardholders, although families would only show up as a single cardholder in that number.
Some 570 members come from Athabasca County, 550 come from the town, and 67 come from summer villages, who don’t contribute to the library according to Powell.
“When I was first elected in 1998, the county did not contribute to the library, but at some point that started happening,” said Powell.
As of 2020, Athabasca County had agreed to fund the library for 10 years, so the agreement still has another five years to go before it ends.
“We’ll back then.”
Twenty per cent of the libraries patrons are under the age of 17, making youth the second largest user group the library deals with. There’s a relative lack of users between 18 and 24 years of age, with only 13 per cent of the patrons falling into that area, and the 35-to-50 age range is well represented, with 20 per cent of the libraries users.
The biggest user base are seniors — 28 per cent of the men and women that walk through the doors are older than 65.
“One of the myths is that the only people who use the library have hair my colour,” said Powell.
“That’s just not true. It’s the largest, but the next largest is 0-17. The only range of concern is the 18-24. Part of it is a change in generational use; young people aren’t reading as much anymore, although there are other things to do at the library.”
“Those things” include the Get Lit book club, which reads a romance novel every month, and a monthly Dungeons & Dragons game, and a French story time for students learning the language. The library’s other programming, including the award-winning One Book One Community program, and the summer reading program, which brought in 454 kids over 23 sessions.
“I wanted to complement the programming for children. It’s a real advantage for the community, it brings the community together and it connects parents with each other. There’s more than one grouping of parents who met each other through programming that are still friends today,” said Coun. Brian Hall.
Powell said anyone looking to help out at the library can join the newly formed “Friends of” group that had brought back the beloved Taste of Athabasca event.
“We’re hoping they can do some serious fundraising because we need between five and seven million, whatever it costs to build a new library. It won’t happen overnight, but the town certainly doesn’t have the money,” she said.
Powell said the discussion around a new building were ongoing, but the current building was both at capacity, and facing issues with worker safety, temperature control, and a myriad of other issues.
“We need a new building, and it will happen at some point. We’re doing that by raising money, and raising awareness.”
