New Director: Hope Hansen takes the helm at Soda Springs Library

Long-serving Library director Cindy Erickson officially retired at the end of the Summer Reading program the last week in June, and also officially handed the reins over to incoming director Hope Hansen.  While the role comes with a lot of responsibility and a host of new duties and procedures to learn, Hansen’s immediate concern was starting into the position after Erickson’s tenure.  “Those are impossible shoes to fill,” Hansen said.  “But I want to make sure we have people in place to provide everything to the community we can.”

The library staff, for their part, expressed no concerns about Hansen’s ability to fill those shoes.  Erickson herself related that “She’s going to be amazing!  She’s perfect for it,” a sentiment that was echoed by Children’s Librarian Dorajo Messerly.  “She’ll be fantastic,” Dorajo said.

Hansen was born and raised in Soda Springs, and has been a lifelong resident, other than a few years here and there for school and work, living briefly in Salt Lake, Star Valley, and Rigby.  Hansen has been back in town for around five years with her young family.  On her return to town, she noted that it had grown a bit since she left after graduation, but she has had a fun time running into both new people, as well as familiar faces she hadn’t seen in years.  As far as her plans moving forward, Hansen wants to remain in Soda Springs, which she says is the perfect size.  “After living in a few other places—which included Rigby, mind you—my kids said ‘I never want to live in a big city again, let’s stay here’,” Hansen laughed.  She is hopeful that her kids can have the same kind of experience she did growing up in Caribou County.  

As the youngest of ten kids, Hansen found herself spending a lot of time at the park and the library while growing up.  “I’ve always been a reader.  I was here a lot,” she said.  

At that time, the library was quite a bit smaller.  The children’s wing was an addition that was added during the mayorship of Jim Smith, and greatly expanded both the physical area inside the library, as well as the library’s capacity for maintaining a book collection catered to the younger set.

Other changes have come to the library in the intervening time as well, including aesthetic changes like the carpet.  “I’m pretty sure it used to be orange and ugly,” Hansen laughed.  “And I’m pretty sure we used the old card catalog.”  

While she will likely have a bit of a grace period as her stewardship starts, a couple of immediate issues will be confronting Hansen at the drop.  Most directly, Main Street will be undergoing construction over the summer in order to redo curb and gutter, as well as sewer and water lines.  While the library itself will largely be unaffected, there will be a point at which the building will have to be closed as a result of the water and power being shut off briefly.  Of more impact will be the parking situation.  Main Street will be closed on one side of the road at a time, meaning that library patrons will need to park in other areas, including around the city park or possibly in the geyser building parking lot, depending on where the equipment is staged.  “It will be a bit inconvenient, but not a huge thing,” Hansen predicted, a sentiment echoed by the city and businesses on Main Street.

The other issue on the docket is the recent legislation recently passed by the Idaho Congress related to library materials.  The new legislation is in the early stages of being tested across the state, with some libraries facing problems of administration and staffing limits on what they can manage, and opting to restrict all their contents to just adults in order to avoid the legal entanglements.  Such as solution is not likely to become widespread, and Hansen is clear that Soda Springs library would not pursue that path.  “Libraries have to be open for kids, that’s just the way it has to be,” she says.  

Because the collection at the library is driven by local requests for material, she feels that the contents of the library are already responsive to the community’s needs and interests, and any challenges to the material can be handled easily by library staff.  In the long run, it’s likely that the state legislation will be amended, clarified, or rewritten at some point down the road as the practical effects of the restrictions (which allow for materials to be challenged and restricted for adult-only access, and libraries to assume responsibility for doing so) become more widely debated.  In any case, Hansen does not believe the issue will be a major one in town.

“We’re a community that is supportive and full of good people.  I think we’ll be fine,” she said.  Indeed, the library has a lot of supporters, many of whom grew up like Hope as “library kids.”  Among those are the Friends of the Library group, which works to raise money for the library to use on projects outside to budget constraints of the city.  Jessica Ineck, for one, was outside during the 4th celebration hosting the Book/Plant/Bake sale.  “It’s been great,” Ineck said. “A lot of people have stepped up to help out with this, like they always do.”  

Hansen also talked about the idea of the library as a hub of the community, in terms of many of the things that are not strictly related to books that the library is involved in.  From providing a place to charge a defibrillator to emergency pants hemming, the library has provided a number of unusual services in Hansen’s time there.  In addition to the outlier cases, the staff also provides routine services that you might not immediately think of, such as providing a safe place for kids and adults to gather during the day, facilitating internet and communication access to people without the technology at home, food preparation ideas and a freeze drier, locations for local clubs, groups, and organizations, and so on.

Hansen is committed to “fulfilling the needs—book related or not—of the community in every way we can.”  She also has her sights in continuing the project of expanding the back patio area of the library into the park to allow for more outdoor activities and seating areas for patrons.  

One thing that Hansen certainly plans to continue is the library’s status as a active place.  As the noise of kids laughing and adults chatting around the circulation desk filled the room, she noted, “it IS a library, but it isn’t necessarily a quiet place!”