'That aspect of discovery is just so magical'

SANDPOINT — Libraries are Vanessa Velez's happy place.

After moving to Sandpoint in July 2006, the new East Bonner County Library District director found herself working at Coldwater Creek's downtown Sandpoint store and as a server. When the summer season ended and at a loose end, she decided to volunteer at the library.

Instead, she was hired for an entry-level page position.

It felt, Velez said, like coming home.

"Originally, my love of books and reading is what attracted me to the library field, I would say," Velez said. "I definitely have sort of an obsession with books and libraries in general, just growing up in them, and the magic of what something like a book can provide."

That first position at the Sandpoint Library meant a lot of putting materials back on shelves or working behind the scenes to keep up with the constant flow of materials coming into the library and going out into the community.

It wasn't long after she was hired that Velez knew that libraries were where she was meant to be. Soon, the page position transitioned into working in tech services and then in adult services, where she helped select items for the library's collection of materials.

In 2012, Velez decided to take the next step and pursue a master's degree in library and information science, graduating from the online program at the University of Washington in 2015.

While challenging, Velez said she jumped headfirst into the challenge, juggling her full-time job at the Sandpoint Library with the program's demands.

"I think it was stimulating, interesting ... tears were shed sometimes, I'm not going to lie," she said with a chuckle. "There were parts that were very frustrating and challenging."

But, she said, it has been worth every challenge and tough moment.

The MLIS degree follows Velez's graduation from Yale with a bachelor's degree in Spanish. Growing up in a Spanish-speaking home with a Puerto Rican father and a Swiss mother, Velez holds dual citizenship between the United States and Switzerland and speaks three languages: English, Spanish and French. Pursuing a degree in Spanish allowed her to gain a deeper understanding of that side of her heritage, going beyond the "passive understanding" she had while growing up.

In high school, Velez spent a year in Switzerland as an exchange student and, following graduation from Yale, spent several years living in Europe. While there, she worked several odd jobs and found herself drawn to local libraries and bookshops in her spare time. 

After returning to the States and then moving to Sandpoint, it was the page job that made her realize that libraries could be more than a favorite place to spend an afternoon.

"If you're going to work so many hours in your life, you might as well at least be in a space that inspires you … Just being surrounded by those millennia of human work and knowledge, there's always something very stimulating about that," said Velez before chuckling. "I didn't go straight into librarianship as a profession. I stumbled into it, if anything."

Velez has served as interim director twice, once when the library's previous director, Viktor Sjoberg, stepped down temporarily in 2022 and again in mid-2023, when he stepped down permanently. The most recent stint lasted just about a year before she was selected to permanently lead the sprawling district, which encompasses the eastern half of Bonner County.

Velez said she supports the board and its almost year-long, nationwide search for a new director. Like them, she and the rest of the staff wanted the next director to be the right person for the job.

"Libraries serve their individual communities," Velez said. "So having the direction, the vision co-created by the community, I think, is super important."

While having someone new with fresh ideas is important, libraries also need to understand and serve the communities in which they are located, she said. 

"I wouldn't have wanted them to take the easy road and say, 'OK, well here, do you want to just be the director?' because there might be someone. I told them all along there might be someone so perfect for this role, and you won't know until you look and bring them in and talk to them."

While she wanted what was best for the library, Velez also knew she wanted the job and wanted to be a library director.

"I was at the point where this was the only position really left for me if I wanted to continue to grow in my career," she said. "The only other option would have been to go elsewhere, and I love this town, this community, and I don't want to go anywhere else. Yeah, this is home."

Velez got her first taste of working in a library in college when she was matched with a position in one of Yale's libraries as a desk clerk. It didn't take long before she was obsessed with the space, she said.

"Sitting there at the big desk with massive stone archways around you definitely had a feeling of kind of like a sacred space," she said before adding with a laugh, "even though people were academics and really just slogging it in a study carrel, so wasn't particularly romantic. But I just love being surrounded by that environment."

Having worked in both academic libraries and in public libraries, Velez noted there are similarities and differences but said she loves working in public libraries because of the community aspect of what such facilities provide.

While academic libraries trend toward a more serious focus, public libraries are centered around their communities. More service-oriented in nature, they are meant to connect and inspire. While she briefly attended grad school in Switzerland, Velez said she didn't feel connected to the program and soon left. While figuring out her next steps, Velez said she found herself drawn to libraries and bookstores.

"They were just aspects of home to me," she said.

Since their early days, libraries have gone from book-centric facilities to all-encompassing information hubs, emphasizing connectivity and community. Libraries are trusted and neutral spaces with something for everyone, from books to internet access to every imaginable sort of medium, Velez said.

"The support and sort of networking opportunities they provide for community members are just really unparalleled," Velez said. "It's one of the last places that people can come for free, and, you know, they're not expected to give (anything); there's no transactional basis to it."

Modern libraries connect communities, both internally and with other areas around the world.

"That connectivity is unparalleled," Velez said. "It's massive. I can't overstate that."

Now that she has taken the interim tag from before her director title, Velez said what lies ahead is a bit of housekeeping and catch-up to modernize, clarify and consolidate processes. It is part of an effort to increase the library district's efficiency, saving both time and money and boosting services to patrons.

Among those efforts are an update to the library's strategic plan and mapping out, with the community's help, what lies ahead and what the future looks like for the district.

Many libraries in towns of similar size to Sandpoint and Clark Fork and eastern Bonner County have much smaller libraries and more limited services.

"I can't even count the number of times people have walked into this library and just have been so amazed that a community this size having a library this impressive, for lack of a better word; just so robust, so lively," Velez said. 

While the library has a diverse, robust collection with a variety of materials and collection options, there is always room for improvement, she said. There is no one-size-fits-all definition of what a modern public library should be.

"Unless you want to see it as a modern library, a modern public library specifically, is a library that serves its community to its highest capacity. … The library should have something for everyone. Everyone should be able to come to the library and receive something from it, but they should also be able to contribute."

The current shift in libraries is a trend toward co-creation with the community for any number or type of services and programs, connecting those who have the skills with those who want to learn them. In many ways, Velez said, it is an outgrowth of the ever-evolving definition of information.

"In addition to providing the materials, which, of course, is something that we're never going to stop providing, it's a huge part (of what makes) the library special … That aspect of discovery is just so magical," she said. "But that discovery can also come from the connections that you make with people."