Back from the Brink

In 2011, at Lance Werner’s very first board meeting as the new director of the Kent District Library (KDL), he asked for a half million dollars for ebooks. He had been convinced to do so by KDL’s existing library leadership—especially Melissa DeWild, then collection development manager (a 2014 Mover & Shaker and now with New York’s BookOps), who had long been frustrated with the scant ebook collection in a system of 18 libraries in 27 municipalities and 240,000 patrons.

“Many of my friends and colleagues thought I was crazy to make such a big request as a brand-new director,” Werner admits. But he saw ebooks as a great way to meet a key patron demand: convenience. “The ability to meet people on their own terms is critical to [our] success.... Ebooks [a]re a wonderful literary medium to support [that].”

The board turned Werner down. But at the second meeting, they decided to make a $400,000 investment in ebooks. Since then, KDL’s e-material usage has grown by 1,586 percent. It was the first public library in the state to offer e-magazines, e-movies, and e-comics, and, as of early 2016, streaming video games.

Werner also led efforts to bridge the digital divide, with pop-up libraries, Wi-Fi access in town halls for rural areas lacking a library, and iPads for checkout at all KDL branches. He brought KDL into the nationwide initiatives Libraries Simplified and Readers First and created the Write Michigan Short Story Contest, which awards cash prizes in adult, teen, and kids categories and produces an anthology of winners annually.

Yet it is his success at convincing antitax Tea Party activists to support a library millage campaign that—like his initial $500,000 request to the library board—is evidence of his ability to garner unlikely support for big ideas.

In 2014, in a notoriously tax-averse county, KDL asked taxpayers to approve a 45 percent increase in library millage. If it didn’t pass, says Werner, the library system would have had to close.

Werner was advised to avoid the antitax group. Instead, says Gail Madziar, executive director of the Michigan Library Association, “He looked toward potential millage opponents as friends who had legitimate concerns.”

“Rather than trying to feed them some generic talking points, we brought our finances,” Werner says. “They asked tough questions, and we answered them. [W]e all came away with a greater understanding of each other.”

One member of the group became an active campaigner for the increase, and several Tea Party candidates supported it, too.

“It didn’t turn out like I thought it would,” Werner says. “It was better, and we won! I learned that people are people, and it is a mistake to make assumptions. We managed to find a library champion that was anything but obvious.”