If you were to ask folks on Swan’s Island what the community’s hub is, they probably wouldn’t say it was the library. The Odd Fellows Hall, the store, their church, or maybe the post office wouyld be likely answers.
But why not the library? It’s about the only non-municipal building on the island that is open to the public year-round, it serves as a 24/7 internet hotspot, and as the island’s emergency warming center in the colder months. If that all sounds like a recipe for the perfect community center, you’d be of the same mind as the staff and board of the Swan’s Island Educational Society.
There is no village center on Swan’s and few walkable neighborhoods. “Third” spaces, those that are not work or home, are few and far between for the year-round population of 400, especially in the winter.
I’ve heard many people say they arrived on Swan’s in its era of “teachers and preachers,” and to this day, it seems most people find community in one of the island’s three churches.
After graduating from New York University, Wesley Staples returned home to the island with 2,000 books in tow.
A library arrived on Swan’s by chance. After graduating from New York University in 1970, young Wesley Staples returned home to the island with 2,000 books in tow. Looking at the stacks, he and his childhood friend Ed Wheaten saw the bones of a library.
Over the next half a century, the library would reside in several buildings, under the stewardship of many different librarians, until a catastrophic fire in 2008 burned the collection to the ground. On Aug. 20, 2010, Sen. Susan Collins broke ground for the new facility.
On July 7, 2011, community members, mainland friends, and state dignitaries gathered to celebrate the opening of the new Swan’s Island Library.
Now the library is poised for a new chapter. It holds over 15,000 volumes and finds its home in a spacious and modern facility that would never have come to be without the 2008 tragedy. After many successful years as “just a library,” we feel like we can dream bigger. Our current facility—a true miracle for a small island—has enormous unexplored potential.
I was brought on board as an Island Institute Fellow to help lay the groundwork for the transformation from library “with programs” to community center “with a library.”
This process is not without challenges. Island politics are never far from sight, and, in its current form, the library is perceived as serving the “summer crowd.” Indeed, our board skews seasonal and in recent years our programming is concentrated in the warmer months when there are more hands to take on projects.
But while summer brings flashier library offerings like art camps and exhibits, lectures, and movie nights, it is in winter that the real work of being a community center happens.
Muddling through the Department of Marine Resources website to help an older fisherman renew his offshore license, helping someone print tax documents so they can run to the post office before it closes at noon, coming to the library every wintery Saturday morning to brew a pot for coffee hour, not knowing if anyone will make the trip in the cold.
There is no one-size-fits-all plan for a community center, let alone an island community center. Over the first ten months of my fellowship, we have conducted a community needs assessment to better understand what our community wants from a reimagined Swan’s Island Educational Society. The next year of my fellowship will be shaped by the development and implementation of robust year-round offerings at the library for the first time ever.
As the saying goes, “When life gives you a library, make lemonade.”
Taylor Rossini works with the Swan’s Island Educational Society to help the library transition into a community hub. She graduated from the University of Delaware with an master’s degree in American material culture.
