What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1272416
8 WHAT'S UP! JULY 26-AUGUST 1, 2020 FYI Find the Book "Remote Access: The Arkansas Libraries Project" by Don House and Sabine Schmidt is a collaboration with the University of Arkansas' Robert Cochran, director of the Center for Arkansas and Regional Studies, which partially funded the project. It will be published by the University of Arkansas Press. Schmidt anticipates the book will be available in the spring. Community By The Book LARA JO HIGHTOWER NWA Democrat-Gazette A funny thing happened to writer, artist and photographer Sabine Schmidt on the way to finishing her book, "Remote Access,: The Arkansas Libraries Project" her second collaboration with photographer Don House: She ended up running one of the small libraries that the book features. "This job is 15 hours a week, which means the library is mainly volunteer-run," says Schmidt on a phone call from the small St. Paul Public Library where she assumed the role of director in February. "There's a lot of community buy-in — the number of people who work for a few hours a week to keep it going. I think that was part of what attracted me to it. This is a great example of how a community supports its library. There's a really nice kind of laid- back, but practical, energy here that I really enjoyed. And since we've been spending so much time here, and since I've been learning so much about small libraries, I applied." In fact, Schmidt's life — for almost three years now — has been primarily consumed by the study of small libraries. She and House launched their project with the intention of focusing on 50 of the smallest of Arkansas' 200-plus libraries. But when the project became more robust than originally predicted — and more expensive, given that Schmidt estimates each library study costs around $1,000 in supplies and travel expenses — they cut that number in half. The arrival of covid-19 in March further cut the list down to 21. The final book will take a close look at these small libraries and the important place they hold in their community's ecosystem. Schmidt says she and House got the idea from their own personal experiences with libraries: They live in Hazel Valley, and the two avid library patrons found themselves almost equidistant from both the St. Paul Public Library and the Fayetteville Public Library. The contrast was striking. "We were thinking, more and more, about the importance of small libraries in small rural communities," she says. "Especially because we also went to Fayetteville. Fayetteville, as we all know, is this fantastic, world class library. And then to come over here and see what can be done with a tiny budget but a lot of community support — it was really impressive. We started talking about what would happen if a library had to close or if a Photographers capture magic of small-town libraries "As kids, a lot of us may have had access to a small library with a friendly librarian who lets you in, and you're 10 years old, and she kind of steers you away from the kids' books and says, 'Why don't you check over there?'" says Sabine Schmidt. "I ended up reading stuff I never knew existed, like my first John Steinbeck novel or something. So I think there's a bit of a romantic, nostalgic aspect to it, what a librarian does for her community." This photo was taken at the library in Stamps, but Schmidt is now the librarian at the St. Paul Public Library. (Photo by Don House) FEATURE