Elizabeth Freise moved to Johnson County in the mid-1970s when she was only four years old. One of the first places her mother took her was the Antioch Library. They regularly checked out books and attended library storytimes where her mom got to know her new neighbors, and Elizabeth became familiar with the other kids in attendance. She told me that she even met her lifelong best friend at an Antioch storytime. Today her mother looks back on the Antioch branch as the first real sense of community that she had in the area.
The branch changed a lot over the decades, but Elizabeth remembers that when she was a kid Antioch had very low shelves that kids could easily browse. Her mom would let her check out as many books as she could hold, and she specifically liked that she didn’t need her mom’s help to reach the books she was interested in. There was a particular book about sea otters that she loved and checked out frequently. She knew just where to find it on the shelves. She told me that the more she returned to that section, the more she noticed and checked out books about other animals.
“Looking back as a librarian,” she told me, “it’s that spontaneous discovery, right? Cataloging allows that to be possible.”
Oh yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that about 45 years after she started attending storytimes, Elizabeth came to work at the Antioch branch, and she was there right up until the end of that branch’s lifespan. Pretty cool, no?
She told me that a lot has changed about the layout of the branch over the years, from how and where patrons check out books, to the amount of space for quiet studying, to the placement of the reference desks. She said that she and her friends used to love to ask the librarians at the reference desk totally random questions. The librarians would always tell them how to look up the answer or look it up with them. She remembers that there was one librarian in particular who was always very kind and happily brought them the encyclopedia, the World Almanac, books on geography, or even the library’s resident globe.
Eventually Elizabeth left the area and went to college out of state, but she returned to Johnson County after graduate school. When she revisited Antioch in the 1990s, she found that the old card catalog had been replaced by a computer catalog. She told me that the big difference with a computer catalog was that on a physical card catalog, you had to know what the subject was to the catalogers. You couldn’t just search for a keyword, but you had to know what the first word was in the subject that you were interested in, which was sometimes easier said than done.
“There was a lot more intermediation with the librarians,” she told me. Patrons would oftentimes have to consult with library staff to find materials relevant to what they were interested in. She said that once it moved to a more computerized system, it was a lot easier to find things on your own, and had the added bonus of increased patron privacy.
Since she has the unique position of having been both a patron at Antioch and a staff member, I asked her what patrons might find interesting about the behind-the-scenes spaces at the branch. She mentioned the upstairs level of the building, which was always off-limits to patrons but had served as office space for library administrators in the building’s early years. For decades the upstairs of Antioch was rarely ever used by staff, but one room up there was set aside as a systemwide storage space for the Youth Services program materials. It housed puppets and toys and many other things, and was right at the top of the stairs. Elizabeth told me that there were two enormous mannequins in there that always “surprised” her when she went upstairs for the occasional safety inspection.
As an adult, Elizabeth worked at a University of Kansas satellite library around 135th and Quivira. “When I went into libraries,” she told me, “my positive experiences [at Antioch as a kid] certainly informed what I thought a librarian could be, and that was part of why I wanted to become one.” When the KU library closed, she took the opportunity to hop over to Johnson County Library. She worked at the Central Resource branch for a few years, and then moved over to Antioch where she served as an Information Specialist. Now she’s making the leap to the Merriam Plaza branch as it opens in March!
It’s always bittersweet when a branch moves, but she’s excited. “There are things I really love about the [old Antioch] building and the space, and I have very fond memories there. But I think the new space is going to be really cool. Antioch is really used by the local community, and one of the great things about the new branch is that it’s right by the Merriam Community Center. I think that’s really going to open up our patron base to people who are using the community center for other things.”
She’s also very excited about the “green roof.”
Come check out the new Merriam Plaza Branch when it opens on March 20th, and maybe say hello to Elizabeth while you’re there. And if you’re the parent of a kid who always has to be dragged away from the library kicking and screaming… consider picking up a library job application. For future use, of course.
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