St. Joseph finally gets its own library – five of them

by Logan Gruber

operations@thenewsleaders.com

Abby Lyon always tells her students at Sauk Rapids-Rice Middle School to “read what you enjoy, not what your teacher makes you.” Now, she is helping kids who visit parks across St. Joseph find stories to enjoy. Lyon and neighbors and friends from across St. Joseph have built and placed Little Free Libraries in five city parks – Cloverdale, Hollow, Klinefelter, Northland and the Wobegon Trailhead.

Little Free Libraries began in 2009 in Hudson, Wis. with one library in one yard and has grown to more than 25,000 libraries across the world, now including five here.

Lyon and her husband, Rob, first saw the libraries in Sartell, where Rob is a police officer. They’ve lived in St. Joseph for 18 months with their two children — Nick, 6 and Nora, 4.

“We were going to put one up in our yard,” Lyon said.

It would have started that way until she got in touch with city council member Matt Killam, who put her in touch with public works director Terry Thene. Thene told her it wouldn’t be very safe to have it near a roadway so why not put it in a park?

“That kind of ruined my easy project; it was going to be just one, and then it turned into five,” Lyon said.

Neighbors and friends helped the Lyon family build the libraries, along with donations from local civic groups. The Lions and Jaycees each donated $500 to the cause.

The Lyons’ neighbor, Andy Salzar, provided steel roofs while another donated cedar posts. Another neighbor, Bryan Tadych, helped out a lot with the design and creation of the libraries.

“It’s funny, because we’d be working in the garage and people would come in and help stain, or whatever they could do,” Lyon stated.

The five libraries went up in the parks during the Fourth of July weekend, and they’ve each had to be restocked twice since then. The books continue to make the rounds, either ending up back at a library, or, sometimes at Lyon’s home.

“I’ve had about nine boxes of books dropped at my doorstep,” Lyon said.

Lyon has started a Facebook page as well, to coordinate donations and to let people know when the libraries have been restocked.

“I’ll write, ‘It’d be nice to have some nature books at Cloverdale,’ and I’ll have a bag of books on my doorstep the next day,” Lyon said of the Facebook page.

You can find the St. Joseph library page by searching ‘Free Little Library’ on Facebook.

The library at each park is sponsored by either the Jaycees – Klinefelter and the Wobegon Trailhead – or the Lions – Northland and Cloverdale. Hollow Park is sponsored by the Boy Scouts. The libraries sponsored by the Jaycees and Lions each have a QR code on the side, which links to their respective websites when read by a QR reader, which any smartphone can read with a downloadable app.

Lyon said they have talked about adding more libraries in the spring to other parks, but they would need more businesses to donate and more families to keep an eye on them. At the beginning of July, a library on the Wobegon trail near Avon was vandalized. And sometimes leaks or other issues might occur, so community involvement in maintaining the libraries is crucial.

Overall, Lyon is overjoyed with how her family’s desire to have a little library in their yard turned out.

“How cool is it that kids can grab a book, sit in the grass and read it, and then put it back, all in a park environment,” Lyon said. “It’s so peaceful at these parks.”