'We are here to serve'
KYLE — Books can be a comfort when craving an escape from reality.
For Colleen Tierney, a combination of serving her community and her love of books inspired her to become the director of the Kyle Public Library in November 2022. Originally from New York, Tierney made her trek to the Austin area in 2011 and has been a professional librarian in education and cities for 20 years.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to serve close to home in my own community,” Tierney said. “It’s a really wonderful library [with] established patrons and a great community that supports the library. That’s kind of what brought me here.”
Becoming a mom sparked her desire to enter the profession, Tierney explained.
“I was just buying every single book for my kids and going to the library all of the time. I hadn’t really considered becoming a librarian because unfortunately, the librarians of my youth weren’t really nice. They were strict and mean and I hadn’t seen myself being that way,” she said. “As I frequented the libraries a lot with my kids, I was like ‘wow, maybe you don’t have to be that kind of librarian.’ The profession was changing and it really appealed to me. The new way, it had become more like a resource for the community [rather] than the keeper of books who had to keep everything perfect and you had to keep quiet.”
As one of the younger siblings in her family, Tierney was in awe of her older brother and sister who were already avid readers. She has vivid memories of tracing her fingers on the lines in books, imagining that she could read like them.
“I would take a big chapter book that they were reading, run my finger and sort of murmur the way I thought you were supposed to while you read silently. That’s when I first remember finding it so fascinating and I couldn’t wait to be like the big kids who knew how to read,” Tierney said. “We had a whole collection of chapter books, those classics, that my parents used to sit all four of us together and read to us at night in bed … I remember just how special being read to us was.”
Now, Tierney enjoys opening memoir books and learning about new, fascinating people. Acknowledging herself as an optimistic person, she likes stories that are about the resilience of the human spirit and perseverance in finding hope.
While some may have questioned if the life of paper books is ending, Tierney said that isn’t the case.
“What I’ve noticed, especially in the pandemic, is people use digital resources with paper books. I don’t feel like it’s taking the place, I just feel like people have their preferences for which way to read depending on where they are,” Tierney said. “They might want an audiobook if they are in the car or on a road trip, they might want the digital book at night reading in bed [or] a paper book if they are at the beach. I don’t think the whole digital platform has made libraries less relevant or paper books less demanding. It’s almost just a preference.”
“One of the things that the pandemic revealed about libraries is that we are always able to pivot and do the next thing that serves the community,” Tierney added. “We are not going to become obsolete. We are not going to be driven out by technology. We always find ways to reinvent ourselves to meet the needs of the moment.”
Tierney echoed that the Kyle Public Library is a resource for members of the community.
“It belongs to the citizens of Kyle and the community. The tax dollars pay for all of these resources. They pay for my salary and they pay for our staff’s salaries. We are here to serve [and] we are here to make the community better,” Tierney said. “We take that very seriously. Whatever people would like to see here and what they are enjoying here, if they are things they think we could improve on, my job is to hear that and respond.”
The library is hosting its annual Spring Seed Swap on Saturday, March 25 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. New and experienced gardeners are welcome to participate to bring any extra vegetable, herb or flower seeds to swap with fellow gardeners.
A seed-swapping table as well as refreshments, information booths and DIY crafts will be available.
For more information about the Kyle Public Library, visit www.cityofkyle.com/library.
