Why Should You Sit on Your Local Library Board?
Lots of Reasons
I grew up in a very small town and lived about a mile from the library. In the 70s, the main road was a well-travelled highway with loads of summer holiday traffic headed out to Point Pelee. I would walk there and back regularly in all manner of weather to borrow books. My branch of the Essex County Public Library was located in a kind of side room attached to the fire hall. I wish I could find a picture of it because even in my small-person memory, it was itsy bitsy teeny weeny. At some point when I was 9 or 10, they moved to a double classroom in an old school that was commandeered for municipal government. (I think — it’s all a bit fuzzy from this advanced point of view.) It was now easily three or four times the size it had been but still my primary worry as an introverted, book-reading child was this: I am going to run out of books!
I was a bookish child in a not very bookish household, you see. And this weighed on my mind. Once I finished the “Little House” series, the summer reading challenges, and blew through the racks of age-appropriate paperbacks, I eyed the adult fiction and maybe even read Gone With the Wind and Amityville Horror long before I had any right to do so. (Ah, the under-supervised 70s!) I was still tortured by running-out-books worry. How on earth would I ignore my brothers if I didn’t have a book to hide in?
I want to spend a little time convincing you — yes, you! — to consider becoming a board member.
My point is that my literary life started very young and the library was always at the center of it. I make my living now in the book publishing business and use some of my spare time and expertise to support my local public library by sitting on the board. In Ontario, the library boards sit for four-year terms which roll over just after municipal elections, an event that happens again in October 2026. I want to spend a little time convincing you — yes, you! — to consider becoming a board member.
If you have any kind of impulse to volunteer and give back to your community, this is a great place to start. You can be low-key support to the people doing some of the important heavy lifting in your town. You learn a tonne about municipal governance and the unique role the library plays in that as part of the municipality but also slightly outside of it, per the terms of the Ontario Public Libraries Act. You will also learn more than you ever wanted to know about the personalities and politics of running a town but there are good life lessons in figuring out how to navigate all that, too.
With any luck, you will be supporting a library CEO with real vision and clear understanding of community needs — both current and future — and can spend your energy advocating for the library, thinking about financial stewardship, and contributing to good policy development and maintenance. I double-dog dare you not to get excited when you contemplate planning for the next 10, 20, even 50 years of the library in your community.
One of my motivations to join the board is also a little self-serving and political. In an era of book banning and censorship, I feel very strongly that supporting libraries to stay far away from that fracas is this least I can do as a politically aware grown up. Do I want my library to have Pride Month displays and drag queen story time? Heck, yeah. Do I also want to help safeguard them against rabble-rousers who want to control what books are available in the library? Most definitely. The book banning impulse is creeping in on us and is, in fact, already in Alberta. Books have always been challenged — Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 says, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.” But the current flare-up of censorship feels like something new. If I can stand behind our local librarians in any way to prevent this, you can bet your boots that I will.
What does sitting on the board look like? It means 10-14 meetings a year, and showing up occasionally for ribbon cuttings, council meetings, and fundraisers. You might also be called on to use your networks to think strategically about how to support the library system, both now and for future-planning purposes. As a white, cis-gendered woman, I would also like to put out a plea to my more diverse neighbours to consider volunteering on the board. Your voices are needed now more than ever as our communities expand and plan for the future.
A call for new board members will go out in the Autumn that with a new term starting in early 2027. Please consider throwing your hat in the ring. I am very happy to answer questions about what’s required, if you’d like.
