Dec. 2, 2025
Charleston Libraries Rebuilt
Big change doesn’t happen by accident. We sit down with Charleston County Public Library’s chief deputy director to unpack a county-wide transformation powered by a $108.5 million referendum, deep community trust, and a clear operational backbone. From five new branches and system-wide renovations to a main library redesign now underway, you’ll hear how a large system keeps policies aligned across eighteen locations while still meeting neighborhood needs.
Website: spotlight4success.com
00:06 - Welcome And Guest Introduction
00:46 - Role And System Overview
01:32 - The $108.5M Referendum And Buildout
02:33 - Conference Goals And Team Participation
04:13 - Tech Team Relaunch And Survey Insights
05:10 - Teen Collections Shift And Staff Wellbeing
06:42 - Funding PD, Long Days, And Renewed Energy
07:47 - Censorship Pressures And Book Sanctuaries
08:42 - Investing In People And Closing Thanks
WEBVTT
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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.
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I'm Devin Pentosi, your host.
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We are here uh in uh wonderful Columbia, South Carolina.
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Uh we are here at the South Carolina Librarian Association, and we have our special uh special guest today.
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We are so excited uh to have John Walker here with us.
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Uh John Walden, excuse me.
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John Walden is here with us, and he is uh the uh uh one of the uh one of the chief librarians here at the uh Charleston Library System.
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Thank you for joining us today, John.
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Yeah, thank you.
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All right.
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Uh John, can you tell us a bit more about your role and what you're doing here at the conference today?
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Yeah, so uh my role is I'm a chief deputy director for the Charleston County Public Library, uh, and so I oversee all branch operations.
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We have 18 locations.
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Uh so I work, I have a team of four direct reports who work with our managers, um, and we just make sure that we um our practices and policies um and how we conduct our business is consistent across our branches.
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So that's kind of my responsibility, and anything kind of new initiatives that we bring in, um, you know, my team and myself have to help implement those those things at the branches.
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Okay, that's a really big uh really big responsibility.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Wow.
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Can you tell me a bit about the uh journey?
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I understand Charleston has gone through a very big transition in their libraries.
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Yeah, so uh I joined the library in 2019, um, but in 2014 we had a uh library referendum um and over 70 percent of the community voted in favor of the referendum, uh 108.5 million dollars.
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Um so we built new facilities, five new branches.
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Some of those were replacements for branches that existed.
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Um, three of them were new new locations, and uh we're at the tail end now of that project, um, and we also renovated all of our branches.
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Um, our last step is we're currently looking uh working with architects now.
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One of the sponsors here at the conference, Leolio architects are helping us with um redesigning our main library in downtown Charleston.
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Oh wow, that's wonderful, John.
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What a big uh what a big project, and it's great to see that you had that kind of community support to make all of that.
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Yeah, it was very strong community support, yes.
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Oh, that's great.
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And uh, can you tell me a bit about the things going on at this conference here in South Carolina?
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Yeah, so uh we're really excited.
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Uh we uh we're a big organization, and um, as I was saying earlier, uh last year our executive director, Angela Craig, was president of SCLA, um, and she really wanted to make a commitment to this conference.
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I think it's important um as being one of the larger systems in the state for us to to get out and participate, and so we've got staff involved uh on the organizing committee for the conference.
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Um, we've got staff giving presentations um here at the conference, and we're trying to get our staff more involved.
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Um so I think we almost have 30 people here.
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Um so it's almost not quite 10% of our workforce, but it's about close to that.
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So um we see it as a professional development opportunity for our staff.
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We want them to be able to come and and kind of uh see librarianship on a bigger scale, um, you know, and and meet and you know, come out to the vendor hall, uh see what kind of products are out here.
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Um there's really a lot of great um programs with the conference.
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Um there was a documentary they're showing right now called The Librarians.
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Um so yeah, so we we really uh we brought staff in from all levels of the organization.
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Um we have some uh staff that are library students who we want to really um as our succession planning to get them to be librarians and hopefully managers someday.
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So wonderful.
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This is a great opportunity for them to network with librarians from around the state.
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So yeah, it's a great it's a great first step for for staff that have never participated in something outside the system.
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That is great.
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And uh so now you're doing presentations here as well.
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What are the what are the themes of the presentations y'all are giving here at SCLA?
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Uh we I uh I went to one yesterday, or so we have something called the tech team, which is um we've had it for about 20 years at the library, and it's giving um computer technical assistance.
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So we just um relaunched the tech team um about six months ago.
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Um, and so we did a lot of surveying of the public to say what is it that people want from tech support.
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Um, and so Andrew, who's our tech coordinator, gave a presentation yesterday um explaining how we did our survey.
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We had a we had a huge turnout or uh large participation.
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Um I think the initial goal was we were hoping to get a thousand people to respond, and then we got over 6,500 survey responses.
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So that was really good data for us to figure out how best to um offer that.
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Um we um had another group.
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We recently made a a change to uh our middle school and teen collections.
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We kind of separated them out, um, so they gave a presentation on how that worked from the back end, our cataloging department, how they managed that, and then from the front line, um it was a really big project.
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Um, but uh we did it within a six-month period.
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Um I think I have a an employee here doing a program on self-care.
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That's a kind of a big topic now.
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Like, how do we take care of ourselves as employees?
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Because people don't realize, but uh you know, public library work is can be can be stressful.
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We deal with a lot of um difficult, challenging situations with folks.
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We you know we have uh a lot of unhoused people that come to some of our facilities.
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Uh there may be people with substance abuse, mental health illness type of thing, so that can take a toll um on our staff because we are a public-facing organization.
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So uh, you know, she's given a presentation on how kind of how to take care of yourself after maybe having a rough day in the library.
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That sounds uh like a great thing.
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Uh it's it's hard to imagine that um those kinds of things uh happen, but they do.
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Yeah, and uh yeah.
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I mean we do good work, but yeah, we we we you know we're we're a public institution and we you know anybody can come through the door, so and sometimes they're you know um not everybody is in a good place, so yeah, but we have a lot of empathy in our organization and our staff care about our community, so but it can take a toll after a while.
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Oh wow, that's uh that's uh really something.
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Um do you have anything you'd like to share with the South Carolina Librarian Association uh that you'd they'd like them to take home?
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Uh well it actually this is my first SCLA conference.
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Um I uh have participated at conferences on the national level.
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Um and over the past couple years we've been really we uh you know to send people to conferences costs money, right?
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So uh the last couple years we've been very intentional in uh putting more professional development um funding into our budget so that we could send you know more staff to this.
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So uh yeah, it's it's a great conference.
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Um, you know, it's exhausting.
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I mean, we started uh I think at 8 30 yesterday, and then they had a um uh some kind of reception at the at the Richmond downtown library, so it was about a 12-hour day.
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So I was I was pretty tired when I got back, but yeah, it's it's a full full schedule.
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Um there's they've aired some documentaries about librarianship that uh that have been great, and just you know, when you meet librarians, um it's very energizing because we you know I think that sometimes um the work can be challenging.
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So when you when you meet people, um as you probably know, libraries are kind of under pressure right now.
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There's a lot of talk of book banning and um that type of stuff.
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So um, you know, we there was a good uh program yesterday um that I went to called uh some cities have declared their uh their library book sanctuaries.
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Oh, okay.
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To to kind of counteract um censorship.
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So yeah, so it's it's a great great conference.
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Uh I've got some staff that were on the um on the committee that put this together.
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So it's it's it's it's a a packed two and a half days of um activity.
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I mean you get you get very little downtime.
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Yeah, and clearly it's a big commitment uh commitment on on your part as deputy uh librarian, uh given that uh yeah, I think I think you mentioned it this is the largest contingent from Charleston.
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Yeah, that we yeah, that we've ever I as far I mean I've been at the organization for six years, but I don't uh I we didn't have the funding.
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I know that much I know.
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So we we we've really put um you know money into the budget because you know staff need to need professional development.
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Um it's a great networking opportunity um to meet colleagues from around the state.
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Um our state librarian staff are here and they do a lot of good good work as well.
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So yeah.
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It's just it's uh I always find when I go to a conference I come back very uh motivated and invigorated.
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Uh there's just you know when you're with like people, yes, sharing ideas, it's just it's it's really nice.
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It's gonna help so much.
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Yeah, gives a lot of motivation.
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That's great.
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Well, uh, thank you so much, John Walden.
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He is the uh again Charleston uh county uh deputy librarian.
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Uh thank you so much for joining us today.
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Yeah, thank you.
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