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Olivia Aparicio, a Scurry County native, has been an employee at the Scurry County Library for about five years, and celebrated her one-year anniversary in the role of Library Director on Wednesday.
A year ago, Olivia Aparicio was working at the Scurry County Library as a cataloger — entering information about new books and other materials into the library’s computer system so that they could be tracked and checked out.
In December of 2018, former head librarian Linda Jones retired, and Aparicio was named interim director while the search for a new director was conducted. When Aparicio put in her application for the director’s job, she had the full support of the library’s staff. On Feb. 26, 2019, Scurry County commissioners awarded her the position of director.
How has her first year in the role gone?
“It’s going smoothly,” Aparicio said. “The transition at the beginning was a bit difficult, but with the staff and the help of the patrons, everything’s gone great,”
Children’s librarian Amy Hodges said Aparicio has been good to work for.
“She’s been really, really amazing. To face the things she’s had to face in the past year, I think she’s done it with grace and she’s done it very professionally, and I think she’s doing an amazing job here,” Hodges said. “I definitely enjoy working for her.”
Aparicio plans to use her technological acumen to direct the course of the library in the upcoming years.
“We are brainstorming a few ideas. We’d like to do a few updates to the library to make it more up-to-date. Technology is the direction I would like to go in, only because technology continues to change every day,” she said. “The youth are so drawn and into it, and I feel like if we could make a few more changes, it would draw in more of the young people. I would like to see a lot more teens in here.”
Younger library patrons will respond to newer, modern technology, she said.
“We’ve seen a different shift in the turnout here. A lot more patrons, a lot more younger patrons. We’ve seen our children’s program — the story times, the summer reading programs, they’ve just grown and they continue to grow tremendously. It’s amazing to see younger people. We do have free wifi that they can access any time that they’re here. I’ve been looking into other libraries and some offer video game clubs. There’s just a variety of things that we’d like to see.”
Aparicio said that there’s more to the library than books.
“We don’t only offer books. I think a lot of people, of course, when they think ‘library’ they think ‘library books.’ We offer DVDs, we offer video games, we offer magazines, audiobooks, computer use, like I said, free wifi,” she said. “We offer children’s programs, summer reading programs, which are free. The majority of our services are free. Free to the public, free to children and to adults. We offer scanning, we offer faxing, printing. You don’t have to just come in here to check something out. This is also a meeting place or you can come to study. You can come to relax.”
A recent county tax rate rollback election threatened to close the library. The measure was defeated, but Aparicio said the experience wasn’t a pleasant one.
“It was definitely a scare,” she said. “It was challenging, but we were assured through our patrons that the library was needed. Literacy is needed more than ever, and we just kept our faith and kept our good spirits, and we knew when it came time that the public would speak and they would come to bat for us.”
Hodges said Aparicio was a great leader during the time of uncertainty.
“She definitely faced the rollback situation well,” she said. “It was a hard thing for all of us, and we came through it just great.”