Meet Madison County's book boss
Christina Cornelison oversees one of Kentucky's busiest county library systems
Did you know that the Berea branch of the Madison County Public Library System has a sound studio? A row of commercial grade sewing machines? A laser cutter and some 3D printers?
The Studio is just one of the many services the MCPLS offers the County. And, given that this is National Library Week, The Edge’s Meet Your Municipality this month brings you behind the scenes of our county library system with its executive director, Christina Cornelison.
“Not a lot of people know about the Creative Studio in Berea,” Cornelison, told The Edge in a phone interview. “But it’s doing well and we have it scheduled out about six weeks in advance.”
Bibliophiles in the region might not know much about Berea’s Creative Studio, but they sure know about the library system. Of the ninety-seven thousand residents living in Madison County, nearly half use their library card monthly, systemwide.
“Last year we had over 300,000 visits to the entire system and checked out over half a million items,” Cornelison said. “And we have over 48,000 active card holders per month — that means we have that number of people who’ve used their card in the last month. We’re pretty proud of that number.”
Meeting rooms in the MCPLS are frequently utilized for a variety of events, ranging from civic club monthly get togethers, to yoga classes, to homeschooling activities, especially in Berea.
This level of usage makes the MCPLS one of the busiest in the state, not including Lexington and Louisville, according to Cornelison, who has been at the helm since November, 2020.
Growing with the library
Cornelison grew up in Richmond and attended Model School before “getting away,” she said, to Lexington where she obtained her undergrad and advanced library science degrees at the University of Kentucky. She has spent her entire professional career to date in the MCPLS, 15 years in all. Cornelison began her journey through the stacks in 2009 as adult program manager, then moved on to become the public services manager in 2013, before being tapped to lead the system nearly five years ago.
“I’ve spent a lot of my adult life here at the library, but I’ve done different things, and we’re still building on all that for what we want the library to look like,” she said. “It’s been great to grow up with it.”
From storage to sound studio
Community input on how to use all MCPLS facilities is important to Cornelison.
“We did get a lot of feedback from the community that we needed more accessibility for the 3-D printers,’ Corenlison recalled. “They were getting a lot of use, but it was hard to access them. We had more demand than capacity.”
Where to put them was the problem. “It’s not a very big branch. We’d love to have five times the space there, but we have to use every nook and cranny,” she said.
Richmond library branch maker lab manager, Robert Tatum, suggested to Cornelison the Berea branch’s basement was the most obvious choice to locate the printers. He suggested outfitting it as a full-on studio.
“But I was like, ‘That will never work,’” Cornelison remembered. “People that work in libraries are pack rats and there was a lot of stuff in there. And, I just couldn’t envision having the kind of funding to outfit that in a way that would be presentable to the public, and be safe, plus have enough electricity to handle the equipment.”
She relented, however, and her team found a grant for thirty-five thousand dollars, enough to build out what is now the safe, clean, and well-lit Joan Kleine Creative Studio, complete with a pair of spiffy doors for the entrance.
“The doors were actually the most expensive part of the entire project,” Cornelison laughed. “They were something like twenty-thousand dollars. They’re custom sized. There was a doorway there, some double doors, but they were just steel and solid, and I was pretty set on having glass doors so there would be light and you could see in — you know, open the space up a little bit. I felt strongly about it. If it took most of the grant to do it, then was fine. It’s how I felt about it.”
Now, the creative studio, with its small share of sunlight, can accommodate sewing groups, oral historians and podcasters, 3-D printer users, and anyone needing a laser cutter, and is regularly booked out. “I’m thrilled with the usage so far, considering that I feel not a lot of people know about it,” Cornelison said.
Berea branch staff member Caleb Dunaway works in the studio, and is adept at helping library patrons mix sound, assemble projects on the 3-D printers, and manipulate the laser cutter.
“Caleb has a lot of special skills that I’ve not seen in the library field before. He’s basically a sound engineer,” Cornelison said, noting the library is lucky to have him.
Property taxes, plus some Friends
There are two branches in the MCPLS, the main one in Richmond, and our own in Berea. There is also a book-mobile that travels the county to ensure there is countywide access to books. These services are paid for by County property taxes, while additional services are paid for by the Friends of the Madison County Library, a fundraising group formed to support ancillary services above and beyond book circulation.
“It’s always a challenge to find the money for all the things we’re liable for,” Cornelison said. “The Friends essentially support our Summer Reading Program. They have also funded big ticket projects like the Creative Studio. They gave us five thousand dollars to purchase the sewing machines.”
The Friends support other summer activities, including activities held in concert with the Berea Community Pool. These programs attract as many as ten thousand people each summer, ranging in age from infant to teens. “If we’re at the pool, we know we’re going to see hundreds of participants at that event,” she said.
The next project to be supported in part by the Friends of the Library is the installation of pick-up lockers at the school in Kingston. When library card-holding residents of that region of the County place a hold on library materials, soon, those items will be delivered to the lockers for convenient pick-up. All library users will have to do is scan their card on a scanner at the locker bank to retrieve their item from the locker.
“We hope to have them ready to go by the beginning of the school year, with the launch possibly taking place at one of their back to school events,” Cornelison said. “All of this is very dependent upon getting the equipment in time, but again we are shooting for early August.”
Supporting County book lovers
Last year, the operating budget for the whole of the MCPLS was 4.1 million dollars, according to Cornelison. That covers the purchase and maintenance of the more than 300,000 items in the MCPLS collection, whether that be printed books, audio books, board games, DVDs, or downloadable materials. There are just over 95,000 physical materials, according to Cornelison, 41,000 of which are kept at the Berea branch.
To determine what is most in demand by County residents, the book selection department orders materials using a number of data sets describing the County’s demographics. What goes on the shelf is well researched first, especially in Berea, given the lack of space, according to Cornelison. “We want to make sure everything will be used by the community,” she said.
If a library user requests that MCPLS purchase a certain book, the selection department will research it and often make that purchase, which Cornelison said delights her. “I love that the community is taking the time to request items that we can put on the shelves for everybody,” she said.
And if multiple library users want to read the same book at the same time, there’s a plan for that, according to Cornelison. The selection department researches which authors tend to be in highest demand based on hold ratios on previously released titles by that person. They then order multiple copies of the new titles to ensure enough books for hungry readers. Cornelison said that it’s typically one copy for every five holds.
“We try to keep up, but we don’t have unlimited resources, although I wish we did,” Cornelison said.
That 4.1 million also covers staff. There are 59 staff members systemwide, according to Cornelison, with 20 of those working in Berea. When a reporter informed Cornelison of the many positive interactions she’d had with the Berea branch staff, Cornelison was pleased. “That’s what we like to hear. That’s what we’re aiming for.”
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Berea library staff are awesome