Cory McAnelly and Trevor Meers

Iowa View contributors

As restless as you’re feeling right now, think what it’s like for Shakespeare and Maya Angelou. Book lovers like us imagine them (at least in print form) sitting impatiently on the quiet shelves of our closed libraries alongside Harry Potter, Jane Austen and countless others. You can practically picture the books’ covers bulging from the stories’ eagerness to escape into the hands of their next reader.

But if silent stacks are all that come to mind for the over 9,000 public libraries found in communities across the nation right now, you’re missing much of the story. In the Quarantine Era, the Des Moines Public Library’s invisible collection is traveling around the metro area at an unprecedented rate. Knowledge, history shows us, refuses to be contained by barriers as flimsy as closed doors, whether you’re talking about the Enlightenment or Des Moines in the spring of 2020.

During March, checkouts of electronic books from the Des Moines Public Library jumped 25%, and more than 750 new users accessed the library’s eBooks and eAudiobooks. The library issued more than 1,000 new digital cards and helped users reactivate scores of old ones. Streaming video use jumped 60% in the last month, delivering another option for local citizens who may lack the resources (or taste in entertainment) to binge on “Tiger King.” A digital-only summer reading program is in the works to make sure the library still reaches into the homes of our community to help avoid the summer education slide, just in case.

The Des Moines Public Library has told us for years that they deliver far more than printed books, and 2020 has made the library’s surprising range visible to thousands of new users. But even with the Des Moines Public Library’s robust digital response to this challenge, a closed physical library leaves a hole in the community. For some students, an online scholarship application goes unsubmitted if they can’t use the library’s computers. For many kids (and their parents), days stretch on endlessly without access to story time or a favorite reading nook. And, for more people than most of us realize, a friendly face behind the circulation desk represents the highlight of every day.

The 543 public libraries in Iowa will, of course, eventually reopen with all these elements. And now is the time to ensure that they come back ready to support residents’ fresh appetites for the collections’ breadth. The perfect opportunity to help arrives on April 23 with the second National Library Giving Day. Every donation truly matters. So like a grass-roots political campaign, we’re calling on the users themselves to ensure that our libraries return at full strength. If you’ve ever discovered one book that ignited your imagination, watched your child’s face brighten during a story, heard of a person finding a job through library computers, or seen libraries change lives in a hundred other ways, please consider helping on Library Giving Day.

When Des Moines stirs again, our library will be at the center of the story.

To contribute

To make a donation, visit dmpl.org/foundation or mail a gift to DMPL Foundation, 1000 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50309.

Cory McAnelly, counsel at Principal Financial Group, and Trevor Meers, marketing director at Graham Construction Co., serve as president and vice president of the Des Moines Public Library Foundation board of directors.