Johns Island Library gets manager, to open in October 

The new Johns Island regional Branch Library has its first manager, and in the near future, truckloads of new books, CDs, videos and DVDs will be pulling up to the nearly completed building’s doors.  Many of the newest and most popular titles are being sought and purchased for the $4.3 million library on Maybank Highway.  Many new items acquired for Johns Island are already in storage at the Main Library on Calhoun Street, but the bulk of the first 35,000 books, audio recordings and videos will be shipped by their distributors directly to the new library, according to Rodger A. Smith, collection development librarian for Charleston County.  The library system expects to be given the keys to the building in mid-July and to open in the first week of October after putting in furnishings and installing shelves and stocking them. “We are on schedule, but there are many things to be done,” Smith said.   Recently named to manage the new library branch was Darlene P. Jackson, the manager of the county’s Mount Pleasant Regional Branch Library.  Jackson is enthusiastic about her new role and said she wants to make the first public library built the serve the Sea Islands a hub of programs and activities, as well as a storehouse for information.  With a special bond being established with the adjacent Haut Gap Middle School through a planned community outreach and programs envisioned for six days a week, the new library “will be a model for change for the entire library system,” she said. The building will house a Story Hour Room, a conference room and large children’s are.  At least 1,000 books and 500 audio-visual items will be in Spanish, and 40 computers will be set up, including two in Spanish.  Smith said budget constraints limit the library’s initial offerings to 35,000 items, but in time, the 16,000-square–foot library will be filled. “We have about $1 million, but it will cost another $2 million to get to what we have at Mount Pleasant and St. Andrews (branches).  But they have been open 10 years and have been steadily building those collections over time,” Smith said.  He said about 90 percent of what will be on the new library’s shelves will be purchased from major distributors over the Internet.  Selections for Johns Island are based largely on what has proven popular at the county’s other regional and branch libraries. “We want the newest, most popular items, particularly for a branch (library).  That is what the people want, and we want to respond to the demand, Smith said.    The new library is being built to serve Johns, Wadmalaw, Kiawah and Seabrook islands.  It is a large culturally and economically diverse region with small towns, small and large farms and residences ranging from million-dollar seaside resort properties to aged mobile homes in relative isolation.  To better serve the region, Smith said, the library will seek more material for blacks, “who have been on Johns Island literally hundreds of years;” more Spanish-language materials, reflecting a growing Hispanic population; and more materials about golf and tennis, reflecting recreation popular on Kiawah and Seabrook islands.  Smith said it’s a challenge buying for a new library branch while also continuing to meet the needs of the Main Library, its many regional libraries and branches and a Bookmobile. “Johns Island will be our 17th separate collection,” Smith said.  “We have to have some kind of plan.  We have to do this in some kind of orderly fashion, or it would be chaos.”  As he spoke, boxes of books were arriving and being sorted and stored at the Main Library on Calhoun Street.  Smith said every box contains something for the Johns Island Library but added that most of the books for Johns Island will be trucked in later to the library, straight from distributors. “The books will be ready to go.  All we will have to do is log them into our computer system and put them on the shelf,” Smith said.  While continuing to manage the Mount Pleasant branch, Jack, of West Ashley, is readying for the new library’s opening.  She vowed to “hit the ground running.”  A staff is being assembled, and Jackson said she is working with the citizens group Friends of the Library to set up and operate children’s and other programs.  Jackson said two assistant managers for Johns Island have been selected:  Jennifer Myers, a former teacher who is the library systems’ assistant manager of services at the technology learning center, and Lisa Schaffer, a media specialist at Charles Pinckney Elementary School and a former teacher of the year.  The library will have a staff of 22 full-time employees.  Applications can be made at the Main Library on Calhoun Street.  A Lowcountry native who taught middle school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, N.Y., before beginning her library career, Jackson has been the manager of the Mount Pleasant branch since 2000.  She said helping people is her passion.  “This is a wonderful opportunity to do that,” she added.  Jackson believes the new library is posed to positively affect all public school students on Johns and surrounding islands.  Being adjacent to Haut Gap, the only middle school in the St. John’s district, “We will have an opportunity to touch the lives of all children going through the public schools” through library programs, she said.  Jackson is a graduate of Garrett High School and the University of South Carolina.  She earned her master’s degree in library information sciences at USC.  While working as a substitute, a temporary who filled vacant jobs in the library system, she realized the library was her calling.  She was hired full-time in 1990. “Working as a sub was how I fell in love with the library system,” she said.  There, she said, she realized her two desires, working with computers and making information available to people, were for her a dream job. “Sometimes in life a light bulb goes off and you say, ‘This is it,’” she said. I had discovered a career at that point that pulled together all of my interest.”  She said she came up through the ranks with Charleston County, learning skills she believes will be valuable to her job at Johns Island.  “It’s really not just about books,” she said.

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