Community Ambassador: Mary Ellen Stasek, Lakewood Public Library

Lakewood Public Library director Kenneth Warren is justly proud of the “smartly designed, deeply conceived, and community-connected web site” that Mary Ellen Stasek created for the library (lkwdpl.org). From the beginning, lkwdpl.org has been about the library and the neighborhood, because Stasek realized how wide an audience it would attract: prospective residents and business owners, genealogists, students doing school assignments, parents, homeowners, and more.

“Suddenly,” she says, “we were poised to present our library and amplify the community to the world.” Her unique tripartite design organizes content under Library, Schools, and Community.

Stasek put her library's local history information online, along with ordinances, planning documents, and brochures published by local government and area agencies. She uploaded class assignment pathfinders and hosted web sites for schools and parent-teacher groups, and, in so doing, she built the library's relationships with teachers and students. She created and hosted web sites for local organizations, garnering immense goodwill for the library with civic leaders. And she posted information on all aspects of “Living in Lakewood,” making the site, and the library itself, “go-to” places for townspeople, parents, and local history buffs.

Anyone searching for information on or in Lakewood discovers in the process what its library has to offer.

Stasek doesn't see anything special about what she did. To her, it was just reasonable to make the library's site a hub, “not only pulling information from without for our citizens, but pushing [local] information...outward.” That information hub is also a master-stroke of marketing, for both the library and the community.