Petersburg resident Deborah Dutton-Lambert said impoverished children are being ignored amid the closure of the Petersburg community library.
During Monday’s Boone County Library Board of Trustees meeting, Dutton-Lambert pleaded to reopen the Chapin Memorial Library site.
The branch has been closed since April 2022 due to staffing issues, Boone County Public Library Executive Director Carrie Herrmann said.
“I am aware of the dichotomy of the Petersburg represented by the demographic and the Petersburg that I see,” Dutton-Lambert said. “There are two of them – there are those that live on the top of KY 20 and those that live at the bottom of KY 20, which is where I live.”
Atop Kentucky Route 20 in Petersburg are those with a median household income over $90,000 while children are living at the poverty level at the bottom, Dutton-Lambert said.
“These children do not have access to the internet, some live in homes without electricity, some live in homes with multiple family members and do not have a bedroom or a place to study,” Dutton-Lambert said. “You are essentially disregarding these children who have no resources.”
The Chapin Memorial Library experienced staffing issues prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Herrmann said.
“We had two part-time people assigned there and they were never there at the same time,” Herrmann said. “We didn’t want to abandon the community, so we are going with the express approach as a means of providing services.”
The express approach involves an unstaffed library outpost that will be part of the Petersburg Community Center, featuring a locker system where customers can pick up their book holds, use a Wi-Fi network, and access books available to community members via the honor system, Herrmann said.
“The building itself will also have public access, computers and printers that (residents) will be able to use in the building,” Herrmann said. “There will be computers available for those families that do not have computers and, as long as they have a library card, there will be a system they will use with their library card to get inside.”
The express concept is expected to be functional by late October, Herrmann said.
A group of volunteers should be created to staff the library, and if a state statute prevents such, legislators will be contacted to address the matter, Dutton-Lambert said.
“There’s no reason volunteers couldn’t be trained, with a confidentiality notice, to do that,” Dutton-Lambert said. “They do this in hospitals and in rehabilitation centers, where there is protected health information. There is no excuse for keeping that library closed.”