In this episode of the Western Wayne News podcast, we talk with Karen Bays-Winslow, who left the big city behind in Oklahoma for small-town Cambridge City and discovered the warmth of local community. As Director of Cambridge City Public Library, she’s navigating funding challenges while championing libraries as vital community spaces where study groups, GED classes, and social services all find a home. From connecting people with their next favorite book to hosting tutoring sessions and preserving local art history through the Overbeck Museum, Karen tells host Kate Jetmore why small-town libraries are so much more than just books on shelves. Enjoy!
Transcript
Karen Bays-Winslow: I’m Karen Bays-Winslow, and I’m the Director of the Cambridge City Public Library.
Kate Jetmore: From Civic Spark Media and the Western Wayne News in Wayne County, Indiana, I’m Kate Jetmore. As a native of Richmond, Indiana, I’m excited to be sitting down with some of our neighbors and listening to the stories that define our community.
My guest today is Karen Bays-Winslow, who’s been working in libraries since 1989. As the Director of the Cambridge City Public Library, she enjoys connecting people of all ages with the joy of stories and learning.
Welcome, Karen. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Karen Bays-Winslow: Thank you, Kate. I’m happy to be here. Thank you.
Kate Jetmore: Well, I’m happy to have you, and I’d love to start with a little bit about your history in the community.
Are you originally from this area?
Karen Bays-Winslow: No, I’m not. I’m a transplant from Oklahoma City, and yes, and so I moved to Cambridge City in 2017.
Kate Jetmore: Okay, and when you came to Cambridge City in 2017, was it because of this job at the public library, or was there another reason there?
Karen Bays-Winslow: It was because of this job, but also because we wanted our children to be closer to their grandparents who live in Indiana, and my parents had already passed, and so it was an opportunity to get closer.
So there’s this really great story of when I came for an interview. I had some time before the interview, so I went to what is now Chicago Pizza, but it was a, it was an ice cream place before, and I walked in thinking, I’ll have a cup of coffee, I’ll just relax, and there was a big table of older men, and all of them turned and sort of stared at me, and I thought, oh, this is strange.
But finally, one of them came up to me and said, you’re, you’re not from around here, are you? He announced himself as a member of the Lions Club, and I’ve come to know some of them later in the library, but I just, I felt so welcomed then, because he was telling me about Cambridge City, and what I needed to know if I was going to move here. And it was just a really, a really nice, warm, welcoming moment, and, and ever since then, I think people here are really friendly, and that’s one thing I love about living in a small town.
Kate Jetmore: It brings up the issue of anonymity. I think there are people who like having anonymity. You know, they sort of live in a big city, and they can sort of move around, and no one knows exactly what they’re doing.
And in a small town, there really is a sense of, wow, people know me here, and I know people here.
And to hear you talk about the facet of that, that really is welcoming and warm and projects a feeling of safety, is really wonderful.
Karen Bays-Winslow: Yeah, it was really nice. And I think that the other thing that really drew me to living in Western Wayne County is nature.
I come from a big city, and I didn’t really have fawns and foxes and raccoons in my yard, and now I do.
I can have the benefits of living in the country with the amenities and the infrastructure of also being here, and it’s really great.
Kate Jetmore: Hmm, it sounds wonderful. Was that something that surprised you, or was it, did you know that you were sort of moving toward a more rural existence and that you would be raising your children sort of closer to nature in that way?
Karen Bays-Winslow: Yeah, I had lived in a place north of Oklahoma City for a little while that was a little bit out of the country.
I like the idea of living, feeling like I’m living in the country, but I can also get to the grocery store and the kids’ schools and appointments.
Kate Jetmore: Right, right. Are there any other, you know, sort of challenges or amenities that you found in Cambridge City and in Western Wayne County that you’d like to share?
Karen Bays-Winslow: Well, one thing is that there are cultural opportunities that were unexpected. You know, they have a great community orchestra in Richmond.
There’s the Richmond Jazz Orchestra. My kids have been involved in Nettle Creek Theater and now Richmond Civic Theater.
And there’re some great artists here. Pam Bliss is an amazing mural painter. And then, of course, we have the Overbeck Museum right in the library.
Kate Jetmore: Right, right. Can you say a little bit about that museum for our listeners who aren’t familiar with it?
Karen Bays-Winslow: So the Overbeck Museum is, it’s a small museum, but it’s a collection of pottery that we’ve, a lot of pieces have been donated, some pieces have been around in the community for a lot of years before they were donated to us.
I feel like the Overbeck Museum is a real gem in the community that not everyone who lives here knows about, but it’s an important part of Cambridge City’s cultural history and represents women making art at a time, in the 1920s, when women weren’t always respected as artists as much as men.
And so they were really, the Overbeck sisters were ahead of their time in a lot of ways.
Kate Jetmore: Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing that and for speaking to that. So let’s turn to your work as a librarian.
How and when did libraries come onto your radar? Give us a sense of your sort of professional trajectory and how you came to be the Director of the Cambridge City Public Library.
Karen Bays-Winslow: Okay. Well, I volunteered as a library aide in high school, and so that was my first taste of libraries, other than being a patron. My mom and dad always took me to the library when I was growing up and we spent a lot of time there when I was a kid.
When I was in college, I thought that maybe I wanted to be a counselor or a social worker, and I tried that out by working on a helpline, and I decided that I really respected people who could be counselors or social workers, but it wasn’t for me because I was taking home other people’s problems.
And then I decided that I wanted to see if I might want to be a teacher, and I loved teaching second grade as a student teacher. I was pretty good with that age.
But my advisors told me, well, you already have your Bachelor’s in English, so you need to teach high school. And I probably shouldn’t have listened to them because that was more challenging for me. And it made me decide I wanted to go in a different direction.
And I noticed that all during college, I had enjoyed working in libraries, shelving books as a part-time job. And I thought, well, what would it take for me to do this full-time?
And the librarians I talked to said, oh, you need to go back to school and get your Master’s degree. Which I did. I just really loved connecting people with information and books, and when I was able to work as a library assistant at the reference desk, it was really exciting finding out what people were passionate about.
It was a real privilege to be entered that deeply into their life. That was back in the 90s when we had more reference questions than we do now.
Kate Jetmore: Right, right.
Karen Bays-Winslow: Yeah. But I was a reference librarian for about three years, and then I worked in middle management since about 1998. I was a branch manager for a while, and then I was a county coordinator overseeing three libraries for a while.
And I was getting a little bit weary of middle management, and I had always had in the back of my head that my ideal job someday, and this was going to be when I got much, much older, would be to be the director for a small-town library, particularly.
I really, I had colleagues who worked in small towns and it really appealed to me.
Kate Jetmore: Can you share with us specifically what it was that appealed to you about making that shift?
Karen Bays-Winslow: I think my thought process was I either want to go back to being a frontline librarian and helping people directly.
Like that was the carrot for me was getting people what they want. That’s really satisfying for me. And in middle management, I wasn’t having that much of it directly. Because I was part of big library systems.
But as a director, there was something about having more of a – it was more of a creative thing, I think, is what attracted me. I could make it… I could have a vision and try to work together with my team to make that happen, and there was just –
Kate Jetmore: And is that what you found in Cambridge City?
Karen Bays-Winslow: Yes, absolutely. I think part of it is it’s so wonderful having a small team to work with because they’re really cohesive and it almost feels like a family more than work in the sense that we all – we all have the same idea about what we’re here to do.
Kate Jetmore: Wow, that’s a really compelling description of what you’ve found and what you’ve contributed to creating there at the library.
Karen, earlier this year, you wrote an open letter to the community in an effort to make people aware of some of the funding cuts that are sure to affect your library and libraries everywhere.
First of all, what was it that led you to write the letter and what was the process like?
Karen Bays-Winslow: Sure. Well, when I learned about the vote that was happening at the State House and then when I learned about the Executive Order, I felt like I had a responsibility to inform the community.
So we’re… People trust their librarians to provide accurate, timely information, and I didn’t want to betray that trust by not saying anything.
I know that not everyone has time to pay attention to everything that happens at the State House, and I know I certainly don’t, I miss a lot.
And a lot of people aren’t aware of actions that happen at the national level either. And so even though libraries are traditionally very fiercely nonpartisan, we serve all of the community, all of the community, and we care about everyone, and we don’t take political sides, but also we are in the business of providing information.
And so I felt that when libraries are facing what could be an existential threat. I didn’t quite know what it would mean yet on a practical level.
I felt that I needed to share the information about what’s happening before we might have to cut staff or hours or maybe be forced to consolidate like some schools in this area have had to do in the past and may possibly have to do in the future. I just wanted to let people know.
And so my process was, I first requested permission from our Library Board of Trustees to share the letter.
I borrowed some language from the president of the Indiana Library Foundation. She wrote her patrons an open letter that was very informative.
And I did puzzle over the language and wording for a long time.
Kate Jetmore: I can imagine. I can imagine. I’m sure that that precision and accuracy is of utmost importance to you, which is, you know, as you said, really speaks to the trust that we put in our librarians, you know?
It seems like you’re very aware of your role and the impact that your words would have. Can you share whether you received any feedback and what that feedback was like?
Karen Bays-Winslow: Sure. Well, I was really focused on providing just the facts without any drama. And so initially, when I showed it to the Board, they were very supportive, and I received really good feedback from them, and then when it was published and released to the community, I also continued to receive good support and concern.
Really? This is happening? And what’s it going to mean? And so as I learned more details about what it might mean, things changed, you know, as bills went out of committee and were redone by the other, I guess it went from the Senate to the House, or I can’t remember now, or the House to the Senate.
But anyway, details were revised, and I tried to share that with individual people when they talked to me. There were some people in the community who I know to have been lifelong Republicans who were motivated to help us spread the word and take action because libraries were important to them.
So that meant a lot to me to have that support. I really think that libraries are something everyone should care about, I will say that, regardless of political party.
I think they’re as important as schools.
Kate Jetmore: Karen, if you feel comfortable, would you be able to say what cuts are coming?
Karen Bays-Winslow: So I was pleased to see that when the numbers actually came out, what the cuts mean for us is that we will have a flat budget, a mostly flat budget for the next few years. It means that libraries and many other agencies, like schools, will not grow with the growth that’s expected in the community of Wayne County is expected to grow, but we will not grow with it in the same way.
So it’ll mean about a $13,000 cut to what we were expecting in the next fiscal year, I believe. Now that’s for the state cuts.
The federal, the Executive Order is a little bit trickier because that hits the Indiana State Library. And I believe they are still sorting out details of how that affects them.
I believe they have to cut some staff. There’s been… Redistricting in the consultants that work with public library directors and reorganizing. I was happy to hear that the state librarian is going to do everything he can to maintain InfoExpress, which is the books that travel around through all of the Evergreen libraries. That’s over 100 libraries.
So if you want a book from Bloomington, I can get it for you in just a few days. So they are going to maintain that as long as they can, and they are going to maintain our subsidies for things like the Indiana Digital Library as long as they can.
If there were further cuts, I don’t know what would happen, but I believe they are cutting what they can at their level to try to preserve those subsidies for us because if we had to pay it, pay for some of these things on our own, like the e-books and the e-audios, without the consortium discount and without the subsidies, I don’t know that we could afford it or maybe we could afford it if we cut hours and staff.
Kate Jetmore: So that is a risky situation.
Karen Bays-Winslow: I just think we’ll learn more about the federal situation as time goes on.
But overall, it’s not as dire as I feared, but also I won’t be able to grow the library like I had hoped. I was wanting to replace my children’s librarian that I had lost. I lost a full-time children’s librarian who worked here for 25 years.
And she was wonderful. And I would love to replace that position, but I am nervous to do so now.
Kate Jetmore: Right, right. Well, I really appreciate you delving into some of the finer points. And I know that we really are in a moment in time in our society, and specifically here in Wayne County, of flux.
You know, there’s a lot of change going on and a lot of unknowns. But if you’re able to speak to it, what do you see coming in the years ahead for libraries in general, and more specifically for small libraries like yours?
Karen Bays-Winslow: Well, I think that digital library services are going to continue to grow and be even more important. Sadly, we have a little bit less foot traffic in the library for people getting print books than we used to.
People have not been reading nonfiction books from the library as much as they used to, so we’re buying more fiction and less nonfiction in general.
But the digital services, e-books and e-audios, my statistics have gone way up, and so I think we’ll be investing more funds in those and maybe a little bit less in books, although books are still always going to be important, especially for children because there’s something about turning those pages and smelling the books, and seeing all the bright colors.
I also think that the library is an important meeting space for the community. We host all kinds of different groups here and clubs.
We even have Bible Study Club that’s been meeting here. We have tutors who meet with students here. We are hosting the Richmond Adult Education for students in Western Wayne County who want to get their GED.
I feel like that’s a really important service. And then social services visits happen at the library quite often because we’re in neutral territory.
Kate Jetmore: Right, right. Oh, I really appreciate hearing all of those details. I think in general, people are aware of the importance of the library, but maybe, you know, unless they’re using those services themselves or know someone who is, a lot of times we don’t know exactly how the library is serving the community. So thank you so much for sharing those specifics.
Well, Karen, I want to thank you so much for making time for this conversation. I’m really grateful to you. And I loved learning more about you, so thank you so much for joining me, and I want to wish you and your family all the best.
Karen Bays-Winslow: Well, it’s been a real pleasure, Kate. Thank you for having me.