ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Celia Stauch does not come from a library background, but after living in Hays for a few years ago and working in the medical field, she moved back home to Plains.
Wanting to become more involved with the community, with the resignation of former director Sara Munn, Stauch decided to take the job of director of Plains Community Library.
In addition to more community involvement, Stauch said upon application, she wanted to bring literacy back to the Plains community.
“Every community, every small town has seen a dip in libraries and literacy, and that is definitely something I wanted to charge at and bring back and get people and kids excited again,” she said.
Stauch became the director of PCL in the fall of 2023, and she said she had a lot to learn.
“There’s more involved in libraries than anybody’s aware of,” she said. “The big thing is we get to be involved with the community. We get to see the kids on a daily basis, and we need to be first hand lifting up and implementing new things in our community. That was super important to me.”
Stauch said the Plains library was already amazing when she arrived, but she has still set some goals for herself.
“Goal number one was to get literacy back with our children and our adults,” she said. “Something we’ve started recently is our children’s book and movie club, and that’s for third through fifth graders. They come in. They all get to receive a book our library has provided them with, and they get to keep that book for their rest of their lives. This book is an older book that’s adapted to a movie. We read the book they’ve never heard of, and they watch the movie they’ve never heard of. The first one we read was ‘The Iron Giant.’”
Upon reading and watching “The Iron Giant,” Stauch said children became excited for the club’s next book and movie.
“It’s a big goal to continue to have that, to continue to have those kids come in,” she said. “These are kids who you would typically not see in the library, and they’re coming in excited to read as a group, excited to talk about the book with each other.”
With the success of the children’s book and movie club, Stauch’s assistant librarian, Emily Holmes, wanted to get a book club going for adults, and that group had its first session recently. Stauch said the adult club showed similar success to its youthful counterpart.
“We had 16, 17 people show up, and in a community of 1,000 people, that is pretty amazing for us, especially when the adults are just so hard to reach,” Stauch said. They’re busy with their own children, their own jobs, their own lives.”
Stauch said she feels she is definitely reaching her goal of bringing literacy back to Plains.
“I feel we are reaching those groups and those people and those age ranges really well,” she said. “My goal is to continue to do those things, and that’s where Beanstack comes in. That’s all mobile. Everyone does things on their phone.”
Stauch said she wants to create a mobile app to help reach those who cannot make it into the library on a daily basis. She added reading has changed from her youth, and while she feels both children and adults are reading, she likewise believes people of all ages are not coming into the library as much as they did in the past.
To combat this, Stauch said she wants to put books in people’s hands as gifts to say “thank you” for participating in the library.
“We’re telling people ‘You get to keep this book’ and thank them for joining our library and our programs we do,” Stauch said. “It’s so big to get them in the door and get them reading. That’s our big goal, and I feel we’re executing it.”
Even before she became involved with libraries, Stauch said she has always loved reading.
“That was always something that was a big passion of mine in high school, college,” she said. “I was just a reader, and when my husband and I moved back to my hometown here in Plains, I said I needed to do something that allowed me to be as involved in the community as I possibly could be.”
After Munn left PCL, Stauch said she felt her calling at that time was to step into the library world and bring joy back to reading.
“I want people to enjoy reading like I did as a kid,” she said. “We didn’t have all these TV programs. It wasn’t so easy to be on your phone all day long. My love for reading definitely pushed me in this direction, and my love for the community I grew up in pushed me over the edge to be there.”
In a small town like Plains, it is easy to get to know regular patrons on a first-name basis, as well as what type of books they like, and this is an aspect of the job Stauch particularly enjoys.
“You get to recommend this new book we think you would love and say I thought of you when I saw it,” she said.
Stauch likewise likes seeing third, fourth and fifth graders in the USD 483 school district come to PCL once a month during the school year to pick out books to take home and read.
“That is so much fun,” she said. “It makes them comfortable coming to the library, getting to know me and the other librarians. That’s a really awesome moment to experience.”
However, Stauch said the best part about working at a library in a small town is having access to and seeing the needs of the community. This also allows her to see where the library can help out in those matters.
“We do it from a literary or STEM basis, but that was I was really passionate about – making sure we had that connection with the community,” she said. “The community is small, so we all know everybody. Everyone knows you call the city, and they can help you with this. You call the Plains Tavern, and you know who to talk to. You can call the community library, and you can talk to Celia. If anybody needs anything, if anybody in the community needs help with getting information or putting on a program or getting themselves out there, that is something the library and all the other businesses in town are able to do. They come from such a close knit community.”
So what does it take to be a library director in a small town? Stauch said for her, it takes a passion for reading and the community, as well as patience.
“This again comes back to your community is small, and they rely on you for certain things,” she said. “The passion for the community is huge. The passion for reading is huge. You have to love books. If you don’t love books, everybody can see it and feel it, and they don’t get excited for books. If you’re not excited, they’re not excited.”
Stauch added passion for the community includes helping patrons grow and discover new things, and she said patience is a huge piece to the director puzzle as well.
“There is always something new happening at a state level for libraries,” she said. “We’re education. We have to flow and move with the times, and we have to adapt when things get a little shaky. Patience is a big one. You have to ride out the storms. All the other times are wonderful.”
Overall, Stauch said her job as director of PCL is the most fun she has ever had with a job.
“We have a lot of freedom to do a lot of really fun things that other jobs don’t have,” she said. “We are all about fun. We are all about reading and making reading fun and intergrading programs that aren’t just reading, but ones that get them in the door and allow them to read. “
Along with other communities across America, PCL celebrated Children’s Book Week in early May, and Stauch said the event brings tons of fun to the area library, as do other events there.
“Kids can come in, and we’ve got 3D printers,” she said. “We’ve got books. We’ve got Wonder books. It really is a blast every day, every week. It’s something new. There’s new kids coming in the door, new families coming in the door, and when they’re having fun, we’re having fun.”
