For Immediate Release
Mattoon Public Library Named Small Business of the Year
MATTOON – The Mattoon Public Library on Saturday received the Small Business of the Year award at the Mattoon Chamber of Commerce annual awards night dinner.
In presenting the award, Patty Peterson, director of public relations at Sarah Bush Lincoln and a vice president of the chamber board of directors, cited the library for the transformative ways of a new strategic direction initiated in 2016 by its volunteer board of trustees.
Peterson was among the community members who provided the board input as the board embarked on a community-centered, collaborative and program-oriented approach to use its 26,000-square-foot facility at 1600 Charleston Avenue.
She spoke individually about each library employee for their roles in the multi-year effort. Those efforts resulted in redesigned and repurposed areas throughout, upgraded technology, furnishings and décor and increased usage throughout. The makeover includes the library lawn and its reach outside the building, including addition of two digital platforms.
The second-floor program room now is a “maker space” for library and community-based programming, most recently an area ClassE high school students used to make pillows for the community’s new innovation center. The teen space has been brightened with new furniture and teen-oriented activities. Children’s area upgrades include both a sensory wall, sensory table and gadget wall.
The first-floor reading area has a new look including a faux-painted fireplace, a lifetime reading journal from the late Richard Record and a plaque that recounts the history of the granite mountain lion first brought to town in 1898 that sits in the library’s front lawn, across from the refinished flagpole.
The library uses its lower basement as a community center, with dozens of groups and organizations occupying the space, some as often as weekly. The basement area has been cleaned up and repurposed as a local history center with displays that highlight Mattoon institutions, businesses and people. Volunteer Chris Suerdieck’s original research makes the area a must-see!
This summer will be the second of a multi-year effort to enhance the look of the library’s lawn.
“This is special for our organization,” Library Director Carl Walworth said of the award.
The library, he said, is uniquely positioned to broadly impact the community in multiple ways. The new direction helped open doors for collaborations with the Mattoon Area Family YMCA, Fit 2 Serve, the Salvation Army, Sarah Bush Lincoln and Mattoon schools. With help from a grant from the state literacy office, a division of the Secretary of State, the library initiated a family literacy program. Mattoon Middle School students lead some of the library’s story times, homeschool parents use library space, as do community groups like ukulele players and emerging leaders.
The library also is growing in traditional areas. New material checkouts are up. The library has added two digital platforms that are driving monthly increases as high as 83 percent. One result is that some request a library card just for the digital offerings, including people who live outside the city but see the nonresident fee as a value compared with what they paid for books.
In accepting the award, Walworth cited three keys: an outstanding board, a service-oriented staff and a supportive, engaged community. In recent years, the library’s received three individual donations of more than $10,000 while substantially increasing donations at every level. The city’s Tax Increment Financing fund helped make possible a tuckpointing/painting project designed to help preserve one of the community’s most architecturally significant buildings, a 1902 Carnegie library.
“We appreciate the chamber recognizing the library’s progress in recent years,” said Library Board President Justin Grady said. “The library plays an important, central role that enhances life in multiple ways.”
