What a true joy and privilege it’s been to start my journey as executive director of the Daniel Boone Regional Library! I joined the DBRL team November 25, 2024 and have enjoyed getting to know our staff, our patrons and members of the DBRL Foundation and Friends of the Library.
Before coming to DBRL, I served as Missouri’s State Librarian. I held the role for 6½ years, and it gave me the opportunity to become acquainted with and assist all 160 library districts in Missouri. Prior to that, I held library director positions in Johnson City, Tennessee and Chillicothe, Missouri, where I first became a library director and worked for almost 13 years.
Columbia has been my home since 2020, and DBRL has been an integral part of my personal life, because, like many of you, a trip to the public library has always been a part of my normal routine.
It was at the tiny public library in Carbondale, Kansas, as a young girl, that I recognized that I needed the library for so much more than just to get my book fix. Today, we talk about libraries as being people’s “third space,” that social place that’s not work, home or school, yet is just as important to creating a supportive social network. Now, this was the early 1980s, and I was pretty young, probably 11 or 12, but I needed a third place to help with adjusting to my parents’ divorce and all of sudden being a latch-key kid, as my mom was now having to work multiple jobs to support my sister and me. At the library, I found that. Who knew there were so many of us latch-key kids?! Who knew that just by having craft activities on a table and a space to talk with others about our day-to-day lives, that you could help a kid feel less isolated and sad? My early memories of the library are about those long summer days, and I can picture exactly where the snack basket was in a library that was probably smaller than the Friends Room at the Columbia Public Library.
I recognize that times are a lot different than during my childhood, but I also recognize that we all need a third space whether we are 11, 55 or any age. DBRL serves as that third space better than any other place in our community, and I will be forever grateful that I have this opportunity to serve you and hopefully perpetuate that same environment for you and your family that I have always valued in libraries.
In this issue, we are excited to share with you the results of our community survey. As both executive director and patron of DBRL, I am proud of how the public feels about our library. To have this survey completed before I started my role helps me to realize that the bar is set very high for me, and that this library district has done an exceptional job of meeting the needs of our community and has a dedicated and talented staff already in place!
I look forward to doing my best to live up to expectations that you have of your library!
Robin Westphal, Executive Director of the Daniel Boone Regional Library