After leading Richland County’s library into 21st century, Melanie Huggins moves on

If you ask Melanie Huggins to pick her biggest accomplishment in 15 years as executive director of the Richland County library system, she’ll likely point to the 2013 referendum in which a $59 million bond was approved to upgrade county libraries.

“When you win a voter-approved bond referendum of 60-plus percent, and people agree to have their taxes raised, that is a smackdown — that’s a good thing,” said Huggins, 55, who is leaving her $199,069-a-year post to become head of Girl Scouts of South Carolina — Mountains to Midlands. “That let me know we had this amazing support from the community. I’m super proud of that.”

Dig a little deeper, and Huggins explains the money led to seismic changes in not just the interior of the signature futuristic glass-walled main library on Assembly Street and branch libraries — and not just in adding two more branch libraries to create a 13-branch system —but in revolutionizing the idea of what a library can be.

“The way libraries were historically designed was that an architect would come into the room, and the first thing they would ask you is, ‘How many linear feet of shelving do you want this library to hold?’“ said Huggins, whose last day was Friday, Dec. 6.

“That is not what I wanted them to ask. I wanted them to say, ‘What is it you want people to learn and be able to do in this building?’ And so we totally flipped that around…..and started designing spaces not for the books but for the people. That’s what I mean — going from books to people.”

David Campbell, a Columbia businessman who was part of the search team that hired Huggins in 2009 and is now on the library’s board of trustees, said she was following a legend — 30-year veteran executive director David Warren, who had led an expansion of the county branches, increased funding and had the main branch get a top national award in 2001.

“It was kind of like replacing (the late Alabama football coach) Bear Bryant,” Campbell said. “But Melanie has really enhanced the library’s mission and purpose to where it’s never been before. It’s expanded from being about books to being about life experiences, and experiences people have while they’re in the library.”

Since 2009, Huggins has won her own share of awards, including the National Medal in 2017 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and become a player on community, state and national levels for literacy and libraries, including serving as president of the national Public Library Association.

From books to the future

It was Huggins’ fate to arrive as Richland County Library executive director in 2009, when the internet was exploding, cellphones were becoming instant portals to all kinds of information and the use of social media was accelerating at warp speed. Huggins leaned into those changes, making sure the library increased the availability of desks with computers and had an ever-increasing trove of digital products, such as ebooks, on hand.

Huggins’ ideas led not only to the culling of books, newspapers and magazines — more than 1 million items were tossed between 2012 and 2018, according to a 2018 survey, dismaying some longtime library patrons. Instead of books, she created numerous open spaces, discussion rooms, theaters, and computer tables. High, warehouse-type shelves that were stacked with tens of thousands of books were changed to lower shelves with thousands of books. More ebooks were made available.

That’s not all. The library has created hundreds of programs and outreaches — too many to mention here — to help people from young children to teens to adults gain information and entertainment in ways that went beyond books and that libraries didn’t traditionally employ.

For example, the system now has eight social workers to help people with matters from affordable housing to food issues, career counselors and a large main branch auditorium where writers and others can speak to large gatherings. It has an Education Studio with three full-time reading specialists who help children who struggle to read.

NBC news journalist Craig Melvin, who grew up in Columbia and worked for WIS-TV, attracted a crowd of hundreds last spring when he spoke about his new children’s book, “I’m Proud of You.”

A visitor entering the front of the library’s main branch will traverse a gallery-like exhibit space of numerous paintings or other artworks and hear teens hitting ping-pong balls downstairs in the teen section. On the second floor, there’s an 81-seat movie theater (“It’s a Wonderful Life” is one of the December movies) and a Library of Things where you can check out a ukulele, a hedge trimmer or an old-timey record player with a turntable. Also on the second floor are the traditional newspaper and magazine racks along with rows of fiction print books.

It’s all part of Huggins’ philosophy that a library is a “portal” with many vehicles to help people learn, and books are just one of those vehicles, she says. “Books became what we call enablers. They weren’t the focus of the design; they were the enabler that helped the people meet their goals.”

Huggins hastens to say that the book collection hasn’t remained static — the library system still spends lots of money on acquisitions, some $5 million this year, much of it digital, she says.

The people who work in the library system also were themselves the subject of changes, Huggins said.

“A lot of librarians and a lot of library workers thought their livelihood was in the collections that they were building,” said Huggins. “They were so proud of the collections that they built, they spent years building them. What I had to convince them of was that that wasn’t where their value was. Their value was when that child walked into the room and said, ‘I don’t really like to read… I have to write a book report… can you help me?’ ... it was that interaction that was the value.”

Security officers have also become more welcoming and are trained in de-escalation techniques, she said, adding they still can call 911 in an emergency. A state law Huggins helped pass gives libraries more power to keep truly disruptive people out.

Under Huggins, the library has become fine-free for late books and the minimum pay for staffers is now $15 per hour. The family leave policy has been upgraded and the more than century-old Dewey decimal system for classifying books has been eliminated in favor of a category-driven arrangement of subjects she says is more intuitive. And the library system — once Richland County Public Library — has been renamed to Richland Library.

Huggins helped make sure a new library branch, Edgewood, was built in a long underserved African American neighborhood near Benedict College, said state Rep. Seth Rose, D-Richland.

One ongoing project — a $2.1 million refitting of the main branch’s escalators — should be finished next spring.

Culture Wars

It was also Huggins’ fate to be head librarian at a time when libraries were becoming a target of book banners.

“It’s really is a strange time we are in. How librarians have become the enemy is beyond me,” she mused.

“There is a vocal minority, they are loud, they are pushing legislation that would imply that librarians are making pornography available to children, which is absolutely ludicrous and not true,” she said. “But it makes a good headline. And unfortunately if that’s all you read is the headline and don’t know any better, you make librarians the target of some of your vitriol and anger.”

“We are very fortunate in Richland County that we have not seen the kind of activity that is happening in other parts of the state,” she said. “Fortunately, we have a county council and a library board that believes in intellectual freedom. But it doesn’t mean that the library staff doesn’t feel it on the front lines.”

Some in the vocal minority “equate books that have LGBTQ+ themes in them with pornography,” she said. “They equate books about sex education with pornography….and so they are trying to decide for all of us what is appropriate. They are trying to decide for every parent and caregiver what their children should have access to. That’s not the way it works.”

Children’s room

The garden level children’s room downstairs in the main library, always one of the system’s jewels, is one place where the old-fashioned print collection is still robust.

In fact, more space than ever has been carved for the children’s room expansive low-lying curved shelves and collections, which hold some 70,000-plus titles of books and digital books. A mural from Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” still covers a back wall, along with free-standing Wild Things figures, as well as a glass enclosed miniature see-into dollhouse with hundreds of tiny objects inside — a draw for years — is still there

“The tactile part of learning to read as a child is a big part of the reading process. It’s part of learning to read, going from left to right, turning the page,” said Huggins. “I don’t see that going away any time soon. One thing I love about the children’s room, you don’t see (electronic) screens in there. It’s pretty much a screen-free environment. We intentionally don’t have them in there.”

There are more than books in the children’s room, Huggins points out. There are small tables and chairs, and ample supplies of paper, crayons, scissors, puppets, markers and the like for children to play with. To make art, children can use clay, pipe cleaners, sponges, paint and different kinds of brushes.

“There are parents that don’t make those things available — they’re great for fine motor development,” said Huggins, who got her start 30 years ago in the Richland Library children’s room before becoming a graduate library science student and going on to hold libriarian jobs in Charlotte and St. Paul before coming to Richland. .

Longtime Richland Library children and teen department manager Leslie Tetreault said, “We have all kinds of enticing things that bring them into the library, and then our job is to see they don’t leave without books, if we can.”

Getting children to read involves approaches by librarians such as letting children know if they don’t like a book, they don’t have to read all of it; they can sample books until they find one they like, Tetreault said. “If you love books, the world is your oyster.”

Why leave?

Huggins is a self-proclaimed “book lover” whose favorite books include “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith and whose favorite authors include Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale.

So, why take a new job when she’s surrounded by books and has brought the library to a new nationally-recognized level?

Well, she said, she’s in her mid-50s with another 10 years of work to go, but she never envisioned ending her career in the library system.

“I don’t feel like it would be fair to the library, it’s not fair to the staff just to stay here and maintain,” Huggins said. “Somebody else needs to come in with a new vision and take it to the next level.”

The position with the Girl Scouts, which covers a 22-county area from Aiken to the Upstate, allowed her to stay in South Carolina, where her family has been since the 1700s, and do something that helps the state.

“This seems like an opportunity to do that, especially in a state where girls and women sometimes get the short shrift….and don’t have the leadership opportunities that they deserve, especially in some of the rural communities,” Huggins said.

Erin Johnson, chair of the library board of trustees, said Huggins has transformed the library system “into a model for the rest of the country.”

“We didn’t realize all that libraries could do and could be,’’ Johnson said. “Many of us grew up thinking that libraries were just where you went to get books. Now we know it can be and is so much more.”

Huggins is leaving behind a solutions-oriented staff whose starting point is, “How can we help?” said Johnson.

The board is currently advertising for a search firm to conduct a search for a new executive director.

There’s no time limit on the search, Johnson said. “If someone is going to come in and fill Melanie Huggins’ shoes, we want to get it right.”

This story was originally published December 6, 2024 at 2:45 PM.