Advice on our rural library closing
I live in a small town in rural California, population a few hundred. Our town library branch is closing, and many in the community are heartbroken and are desperately trying to do anything we can to save it. Here's the background on the situation:
Our library is currently in a modular on our elementary school campus. The county library system had been "renting" the space for free from the school district for many years, but this year the Memorandum of Understanding was not renewed, and the library is losing its building. We found out about this publicly only about a month ago, but apparently this had been in the works since last November, except nobody bothered to inform the community. We have a Friends of the Library county group, and there was a local chapter with a board that apparently dissolved because they were so angered by the decision in November (again, nobody was really informed about this until recently). The difficult is that every force seems to be conspiring against us:
- The county head librarian is uninterested in helping to keep our branch open, despite community members having found a potential new space nearby to move the library. Our local librarian is a sweetheart and works at the school. She is working on a teaching credential, for which continued employment is required. The head librarian is beholden to ...
- The county board of supervisors. They seem to want to shut down our branch as well since they have a budget deficit.
- The school district and our school itself is in a bind, since they are desperately underfunded. The existing modular building is going to be used to expand existing school district activities, which will help boost enrollment and help our school stay open (they were threatening to shut it down last year due to lack of funds).
- The previous Friends of the Library board seems completely disillusioned and angry and are not participating in helping to keep the library open. Given how little they seem to have done to try to save the library or call for help, I'm not terribly sad that they are not participating in the process.
We have an informal group of community members, who will form a new Friends of the Library board, coordinating with the county, the school district, the school, the county librarian, and local newspaper reporters to try to figure this out. Any advice on this situation is appreciated.