Becoming Community Cornerstones: How Libraries are Ever Evolving To Serve Their Communities

By Sarah Ellis

Few places serve their communities in as many ways as public libraries, which have become essential places for resources, education, and connection. Saint Johns County Public Library Southeast Branch is a prime example of that, as it has become a neighborhood hub by serving St. Augustine in ways beyond just books.

“Yes, it’s a library but it’s become more of a community center. We’re not the library of your parents or grandparents,” said Tom Booth, the branch manager of the Southeast Branch Library.

Modern libraries have become growing hubs for communities, offering a wide range of employment opportunities to local residents as well as providing a variety of services. Adam Cricco is a library services specialist who has been working in libraries for the past eight years, and is currently working at the Southeast Branch Library.

Cricco previously worked in the food service industry, as a waiter, before making the jump to work in library services. Libraries appealed to him because they have become much more than just a building with books.

“We are a pillar of the local community,” Cricco said. Cricco is a great example of the extensive resources that libraries offer to their local communities for free. One of those services that Cricco offers is the library’s one-on-one tech tutoring, which is offered to anyone but is especially valuable to the older patrons.

“They can book me for one-on-one tech sessions. It’s 100% free,” Cricco said. “And I’ll sit down with them and I’ll attempt to teach them how to use their devices and I’ve had a pretty good success rate.”

Libraries are not only for the elderly, but local community libraries have services that could be very useful for college students hoping to save a little money.

“You can save money on books. You can also kind of use this as a good conduit to meet like-minded people, you can do our book clubs, our craft classes. We offer a lot here and it’s a good starting point for meeting folks in your community,” Cricco said.

No matter how many times it’s said, the library is a community hub that has many free resources meant to enrich its local community. Todd Booth is the Southeast Branches manager and lead librarian. Booth has become a lifelong librarian after working in the library system for a bit over 30 years and becoming a librarian in 2005.

“It’s not just to come in and take out a book,” Booth said. “We offer almost everything you could think of. We have computers and we offer computer classes. We try to provide programs for anything that we can teach or that we can get somebody else to teach.”

One of the services that’s unique to the Southeast Branch Library is its Seed Library. Pioneered by a group of green local nonprofits and a gentleman that made and donated a converted filing cabinet to hold seeds. The Seed Library offers patrons free seeds to grow their own food and gardens. “We offer packets of different vegetables, natives flowers and herbs, and they’re free,” Booth said.

The Southeast Branch Library also hosts an “Art Wall” where local artists can display their art work free of charge. “It’s a nice little free way for the community to see their artwork and for them to possibly sell their work,” Booth said.

Though the library is tailored to the community there is still an abundance of resources that are useful for college students as well. “We have a ton of databases that you can access with your library card, they’re all free. So if you want to learn a foreign language you can do that,” Booth said. “You learn genealogy research or you can read magazine articles or newspaper articles from a while ago. We’ve got tutoring classes, instead of hiring a tutor, you can get a tutor through these. There’s just a ton of those types of things you can do.”

The Southeast Branch Library is dedicated to its local residents and is constantly evolving to provide as many helpful resources as it can to support its community by being a free and reliable third space for everyone, and Todd Booth does everything in his power to make that happen.

“As long as it’s something that we can do and also is legal, and the county legal department won’t yell at me, we will try to do it here,” said Booth.