Welcome to 2020! As do many of us, I am looking forward to the possibilities that a new year brings. At DBRL, we will be wrapping up our current strategic plan while simultaneously developing our next three-year plan. Thanks to the results of our recent community survey, as well as some internal work, we already have a number of ideas for increasing and improving our services to you.

One major project coming this April will be to ask the voters in Callaway County to consider a modest tax increase in order to sustain and expand services in Callaway.

Thanks to the randomly-selected 1,365 people in Boone and Callaway Counties who took time to answer our questionnaire, we have a better sense of what we’re doing right and where we can improve. The information will also be valuable when we begin drafting our next long-range strategic plan.

We used ETC Institute, an Olathe, Kansas research firm, that does studies for public libraries and municipalities all across the country. Here are some of their findings.

Results from the community survey conducted on behalf of Daniel Boone Regional Library (DBRL) show high satisfaction rates among residents in Boone and Callaway Counties. Survey results show a 96% satisfaction rate for service provided by library staff, 92% of those surveyed were satisfied with the overall quality of public library services and 98% agreed with the statement “I think libraries are important to our community.” The community survey was conducted over the summer and the data analyzed this fall by ETC Institute out of Olathe, Kansas.

Phil Harrison and his family have called Columbia home for over four decades. Phil is retired from the University of Missouri system, where he worked for ten years as assistant to the president. Now he fills his time with volunteer activities, reading and foreign travel. He and his wife have three daughters, one in St. Louis and two in Chicago: a postdoc at Washington University, an actor and a speech pathologist.

If you’re interested in knitting, painting, cooking, sewing or other arts and crafts, take a look at the streaming video classes offered by Creativebug and now available through the Daniel Boone Regional Library website. With your library card, you get unlimited access to more than 1,000 award-winning art and craft video classes for all skill levels taught by recognized design experts and artists.

With the library’s new online registration system, you can reserve library meeting spaces online or register for library events and classes with a few clicks.

This October, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Daniel Boone Regional Library (DBRL). This anniversary marked the start of the regional contract between library districts in Mid-Missouri to provide library services to their residents. Currently, DBRL is made up of two tax-supported library districts: the Callaway County Library District and the Columbia and Boone County Library District (covering all of Boone County except Centralia, which has its own library district).

The regional system concept allows libraries to work together under a formal, legal contract as a single entity. When you hear or read “Daniel Boone Regional Library,” you know that we are operating on behalf of all of our members.

As a 60th anniversary project, we’ve been adding more historical images of library services, staff and patrons into the online Community History Archive.

We have also created new galleries of photos related to specific subjects, like the construction of the first 100 W. Broadway building or the “La Colomba” sculpture that sits outside the Columbia Public Library. Take a look!

Back in the 1950s, the Missouri State Library promoted the formation of regional library systems throughout the state. Several Mid-Missouri library districts recognized the value of this initiative and came together to form the Daniel Boone Regional Library (DBRL) system in 1959. Today DBRL serves 223,303* people throughout Boone and Callaway Counties.

*Based on U.S. Census projections for 2017.

Many non-profit community groups use public meeting space at our libraries. Now it’s even easier to reserve meeting and study rooms through our new online reservation system. You can see a live view of which rooms and times are available and request a reservation with a few clicks. Room reservation requests will also continue to be accepted over the phone.

With the debut of the library’s new Events section, you can now register online for library programs and classes by clicking the “Register” button that appears below an event listing. You will receive email and text reminders of your registration, as well as notifications if an event is canceled or rescheduled. Call-in registrations will also continue to be accepted.