A lot of people have heard me tell the story of Chicago Underground Library’s creation — an invite for coffee to see if this could be a viable idea snowballed into 40 people, most of whom I’d never met, trekking through a Chicago winter to seed the collection and sign on to bring it to life. That was in the tundra of February 2006.

Despite having to move almost every year for the first six years, we somehow managed to keep the plates spinning and keep the collection open to the public. Even when we were knocked out by an actual blizzard in 2011, that was an opportunity to begin our Pop Up Libraries in earnest, an experiment that is now a core part of our programs. Later that year, we settled into our home in Humboldt Park and changed our name to Read/Write Library to better reflect the spirit and intention of the broad collection we were developing. It wasn’t just about the underground, it was about breaking down the binary between professional and community media and acknowledging that all creators play a role in shaping their city’s culture.



I was proud of our resourcefulness, the incredible commitment and support that our volunteers had for the library and for one another, and that it seemed we’d found a way around top-down nonprofit models. We had designed a system of experimentation, creation, and shared governance that allowed anyone to participate and have a hand in determining what the organization would become. And have fun while doing it.



I had always rooted the Library in open source and DIY principles with a focus on creating programs that could be replicated by communities with any scale of resources, so it made sense to me that we should live by those principles ourselves. In fact, one of the things that I remain most proud of is becoming a place where volunteers, especially recent library grads, could learn and develop their skills and confidence while making real impact, leading to dozens of jobs over the years even though that was never a formal intention for us.



A couple of years back, a very wise person tried to warn me that we were setting ourselves up to hit a wall. At the time, we’d probably just overcome Surreal Unexpected Disaster #317 (you’ll find most of them in the index under “B” for “bus accidents,” “blizzards,” “bike thefts,” “bleeding walls,” and “bacteria, flesh eating”) so I figured that we could tackle pretty much anything. After all, I and most of our core volunteers had already been working full time while managing the library; we had training systems in place for new volunteers; we had structure; we had new programs we were developing and presenting at conferences all over. Not only did the new model seem to be working, other people were interested in trying it, too.



In May 2013, I bought a building that I thought was going to free me up to work fewer hours so that I could concentrate on the Library. Instead, it ate my life for two years. Even then, our amazing volunteer community picked up my slack and put together some of the best programs we’d ever run in the form of our Self-Preservation workshops and they got the Bibliotreka on the road to further our outreach. When the Bibliotreka was stolen in August 2013, I was still months away from moving into my building where the walls were literally crumbling.



A year, three new walls, and nonstop 90-hour workweeks to cover the costs later, things were finally starting to stabilize for me — right when most of the core volunteers who’d kept everything running were also headed for huge life changes like moving across the country or starting families.



The model that we built could handle losing and then recruiting and training maybe one or two new staff members at a time, but when it broke, it broke fast. We’d been warned. Already on the threshold of burnout, I was at a loss for how to proceed.

Until a couple of months ago, I wasn’t sure where we were going, or if we should still keep trying. Writing this now, the last year of uncertainty feels like a blip on the timeline of what we’ve all created, but while I was in it, it was a pretty dark blip. Cataloging manager Pat kept the doors open and the volunteer emails going; it was his faith in the Library and reassurance from so many others who I’ve spoken to in the last year that helped get me back on track. It was also being invited into the Creative Community Fellows program with National Arts Strategies, where I’m finally starting to embrace and learn how to navigate those traditional nonprofit models I’d thought we could circumvent.

In the next few months, we’ll be launching our largest Pop Up Library to date, Rewritable Wicker Park, and gearing up for our 10-year anniversary Stacks! celebration in February. We’re also restructuring with a new governing board while our current working groups will be transitioning into advisory boards. The community model we’ve built will still have a role in making advisory recommendations to the governing board and executive director — whether that’s still me in a year is a decision that will be left up to the new board.



I’ve been aware of Founder’s Syndrome since early on; the concept that one can get in the way of their organization more than help it by refusing to allow change. I’m excited to be leading the necessary changes we’re going through now, and excited to see where they take us, wherever that may be.



The goal is to work toward paid staff that can support not only the delivery of our programs on a more consistent basis, but to still develop those programs and our catalog into open source tools and toolkits that can be used by others. We’re still committed to our ideals, but more realistic about what it will take to accomplish them well. And less willing to put all of our health and time and well-being on the line if there’s a better way that could actually lead to fulfilling work for the kinds of brilliant people who come to us out of MLIS school looking for a foot in the door.

We’re proud of all of the experiments we’ve done over the years and the small ways that we may have helped people rethink the role of community media in their lives and in their libraries. Thank you for your encouragement, support, patience, and advice as we try to grow in an ethical way that is true to our own community.



— Nell Taylor, Executive Director, Read/Write Library

