WHEN LAUREL SETSER began her multidecade career as a librarian at the Avon-Washington Township Public Library back in 1989, the building was still out in the country. So far out, in fact, that its nearest neighbor was a barn. But that didn’t last long.
“I remember when they were tearing the barn down to put in a subdivision,” Setser recalls.
Over the decades, as the village she served morphed into a bustling suburb, the mission of her library changed too. It transformed from a quiet book depository into a buzzing community hub. And Setser, like numberless other small-town Hoosier librarians, hustled to keep up.
“If somebody told me I’m afraid of change, I’d tell them they don’t know what librarian life has been like over the last 35 years,” she says. “We have done nothing but adapt.”
Today the library is a community center in all but name, offering everything from classes to a convenient spot for groups to hold meetings. “We assist many people who are here all day every day but have never checked out a single book,” Setser says. “They’re trying to get jobs, or collect benefits, or take some form of digital training. We help local history researchers combing our digital archives. Every day, it’s a new day.”
With the increase in local population, modern-day scenarios have seeped into the stacks. Folks who are likely unhoused show up regularly, and the library has adopted a live-and-let-live attitude. Anyone is welcome to use the building as long as they don’t cause disruptions. Each week, the library hosts three or four supervised parental visits. Librarians prefer to be notified in advance but aren’t always, and Setser has had to ask disorderly parents to leave, though that’s atypical. The loudest static usually comes from the representatives of the agencies who set up the meetings. “If you talk to them about the way their clients are behaving, you can get very irate caseworkers who are truly unpleasant to deal with,” she says. “Obviously our desire is for children to be reunited with their parents, and we want to help them with any service we can, but we can’t give them more than we would give anybody else.”
Of course, books are still a part of the mission. These days, patrons want them in every format from large print to digital. One of Setser’s chronic headaches is predicting which media formats will remain relevant. She still painfully recalls dropping $20,000 on state-of-the-art CD storage systems, only to see the format fall out of favor shortly thereafter. And change just keeps on coming. The library will soon add new makerspace rooms, anticipating a future “library of things” where patrons can borrow tools and other creative equipment.
One tradition Setser wants to see go is libraries being as quiet as tombs. “We’ve always been a loud library,” she says proudly. “If I hear parents shushing their children, I’ll usually go over and say, ‘It’s OK. We’re not into that life here.’”
