After nine years of helming the Athens Regional Library System, director Valerie Bell will be moving on at the end of December. She leaves a system of 11 libraries with 132 employees in five counties.
“I’m not a spring chicken,” she said with a laugh. “I see all these retired people, and they tease me with this wonderful life they’re living. I’m ready to do something else while I’m still able to get around.”
Bell has a sister—her twin, Sonia—in New Jersey and another sister in California, and she’d like to visit both for longer than a week. She took the Athens job in 2015 because she liked the staff and she liked the library board, and because Athens is close to Lithonia, where her mother was living with Bell’s brother. Her mom later moved to Athens but has since died.
In 2017, the Athens Regional Library System was named the Georgia Library of the Year, the first time the award was given to a multi-county system. According to the Georgia Public Library Service, the award goes to the “library whose staff best exemplifies the qualities needed to positively impact the lives of residents in the communities it serves.”
Bell steered the Athens library during the pandemic, allowing patrons to order books online and to have staff deliver them in a drive-up arrangement—the first library in Georgia to do so. She worked hard to keep both the library staff and library patrons safe from COVID, and she succeeded. The library increased its electronic materials during that time, and also increased the coverage of its Wi-Fi system to include the parking lots.
In 2018, the main library on Baxter Street received a huge grant, and with it partnered with the UGA School of Social Work, which staffed the library with student social work interns, offered staff training and conducted policy reviews. When the grant ended, the library hired a trauma-informed social worker “to help people in need and connect people to services in the county and the region,” Bell said. “You really don’t know who is homeless and who isn’t. Everyone is welcome in the library, and we try to serve all of our patrons.” The position began as part-time in December 2021 and became permanent in November 2022.
Two years ago, the library, like the courthouse, had a bedbug infestation. The building was closed and the bedbugs eliminated. Since then, chairs in the computer section have been replaced, and bedbug sniffing dogs are regularly inspecting the library building for the pesky insects.
In every library now there are pamphlets with QR codes that provide readers with reviews of books their children may want to read. Bell said the codes allow families to decide for themselves whether the book should be read. In the middle school section, books carry stickers identifying them as middle school books.
The regional library board has been advertising the position and is expected to hire a new director before Bell departs at year’s end.
“The staff at the Athens Regional Library system are some of the best people that I have ever worked with,” Bell said. “They are so dedicated to the library and serving people. None of them is paid enough for what they give back to their communities. The libraries should be cherished, and the staff held in high esteem.”
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