The Athens-Limestone Public Library has a new director at the helm, but she’s not new to the books on the shelves.

April Wise was named the director on April 20 after originally becoming the interim director on March 22. Prior to that, she had been the assistant director and has seen many other roles among library staff over the last 26 years.

“I’ve been with the library so long. I don’t think I ever thought I would be the director. I never thought I would be a librarian. But, I love it so much and I’m happy to serve in whatever way the library needs me,” Wise said.

She said that might mean plunging a toilet or going over budgets but no matter the different challenges of the day she’s up for it.

“I’m happy that my board has the faith that I can do this,” she said.

She’s seen the library go from the old building to the new one they are now in, and in her office hangs the old Kroger customer service sign she rescued from the rubble as a reminder of what it once was.

“I love how much the library has grown and how technology has changed things,” she said.

Wise said she has a vision for the continued growth of the library. She’d love to see branches in different parts of the county, one day. While she doesn’t think it will be anytime soon, she said in the long-term its something she would like to see.

“I really feel like it’s mine and I want everybody in the community to feel like it’s their library,” she said.

Now that she’s at the top of the leadership in the library, she said she wants to make sure she stays connected to the staff and involves them in her decision making process because they’re the ones who talk to the people who come in and out everyday and know what they’re asking for. The whole staff is very much like a family, she said. They work together to think outside the box and come up with programming for the community.

“We’ve expanded our programs so much these past two or three years and we’re still working on that. So we’ll still keep expanding,” she said.

She said they’ve even brought back some old ideas that didn’t necessarily work in the past but now have had success. A few years ago she tried having a crochet craft club on a weeknight and it didn’t draw a crowd, but she brought it back on Saturday mornings recently and she said it’s been going very well. Keeping their programming going is key to developing relationships with the public.

“We want for the library to become a hub of the community. One of our former directors said she wanted the library to become the living room of the community and … I think it’s coming to that place,” she said.

She attributed a lot of that to the ideas from the staff themselves, such as a pollination day where they actually brought bees into the library for children. But, she said it was important for them to get involved with other local groups as well.

“We want to forge connections between us and other community organizations because there’s a lot going on in this community,” she said. “There’s a lot we can do in this community to support and help each other and that’s where we need to be.”

Now, the library partners with North Alabama Health to provide yoga classes, a local mental health support group meets regularly in their space, and they provide digital literacy classes along with Calhoun Community College.

“With our summer reading program, we’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback,” she said.

She said the best thing parents can do with their young children is read to them.

“I just love it when parents are in with their kids and they’re involved picking out books, and I love it when they come up with armfuls because I was taking home armfuls every day,” she said her own son was basically raised in the library.

Wise said she loves seeing reluctant readers find something they love and then come back for more. and in a way, that’s her own story too. She may not have intended to be a librarian at first but today she loves to serve the community of readers around her.

“I kind of fell into the library and I think it’s where I was supposed to be,” Wise said.