McCaughtry settles in at BP Library

The very last place a casual observer might expect to find Michele McCaughtry, with her soft voice and calm demeanor, is at a prison – but it’s likely what made her the librarian she is.

A native of Red Wing, the new library director at Blooming Prairie Public Library worked for a small public library in Augusta, Wis., before being hired as the prison librarian at Jackson Correctional Institution in Black River Falls, Wis.

She was working on her master’s degree; the position provided her with better pay and benefits, but with an inmate population of 1,000, it also gave her a new perspective.

“We had 78,000 visits a year,” McCaughtry said of the busy library, which also had a full law library. There was a smaller library in the segregation unit, where the offenders were allowed out of their cell and into a room where she waited with a cart full of books.

“They were shackled,” she said, “but they could still have access to what they needed.”

McCaughtry oversaw a staff of 15 inmate workers in the library, “and I read every single record for why they were incarcerated” before she interviewed and selected the workers.

“I needed to know the truth, and I needed to know why they were there, because none of them were going to tell me,” she said. Many offenders were reluctant to let anyone know why they were there – either for safety or simply for privacy.

“Generally, I believed in the humanity of the people that were there,” McCaughtry said. “Most of the guys there want to be left alone and just do their time.”

The facility considered the library part of its educational program – the program with the lowest recidivism rate, “so I felt better,” she said. “They were not reoffending” after being released.

After eight years at the prison, McCaughtry returned to Minnesota, where she spent the next seven years as the director of the Wabasha Public Library before moving to Rochester.

She was a librarian at Rochester Community and Technical College until the end of 2020. COVID provided her with a new vocation.

“My family is in real estate, so I got my appraiser’s license,” McCaughtry said, which kept her busy.

Still, she said, “my heart and my main purpose is my library work,” so she hit the books again in Kasson, where she served as the library director for about 15 months while debating a move.

“I was looking around, interviewing, when I got a call from my colleagues at SELCO,” McCaughtry said, referring to the Southeastern Libraries Cooperating, which provides services to all libraries in an 11-county region.

“They said I really should look at this position in Blooming Prairie,” she said. “I knew about it, but I thought it was a very small library. I’ve worked at a lot of small libraries, and I thought maybe I wouldn’t be a good fit.”

McCaughtry learned it is a branch of the Owatonna Public Library, “and they said it’s a really nice building, they have a great collection, they have program space – and I should take a look at it.”

She called City Administration Melanie Aeschliman, “and she was just really fun to talk to,” McCaughtry said. “Since I’ve started here, she’s been extremely supportive, and the Friends of the Library have been really warm and welcoming.”

So have the residents of Blooming Prairie.

“People have been coming in and asking for me, and wanting to meet me, which is really nice,” she said, adding that their “friendliness and down-to-earth attitude … are really cool.”

The city’s downtown has impressed McCaughtry, too, and “the children coming in and hanging out and getting books – all ages of kids. I’m seeing activity here that’s really positive; there are a lot of good things going on here.”

In these first weeks on the job, she’s been doing a lot of “weeding.”

“I run reports, and I see (the titles) that are being checked out,” she said. “It shows that over time, things may be popular – then they’re not. People have read them, and they can be found at larger libraries, so we take them out of here. We want variety, that’s what I’m seeing.”

Despite popular belief, young people – teens to their 20s – say they prefer print books to ebooks, “for what could be anybody’s reasoning,” McCaughtry said, including eye strain or frustration with constantly changing technology.

“There’s also the predatory, commercial aspects of some of it,” she added. “We’re not trying to sell anything here. We really, truly are looking at the community and trying to get the resources the community will like, even if we have to predict sometimes.”

McCaughtry has not made any predictions because she hasn’t been in town long enough – but she knows what will continue.

“What’s cool is, that Nancy (Vaillancourt) before me, was also a big-time history buff, because I enjoy that sort of thing,” said McCaughtry, who has degrees in history and social studies education, as well as her masters degree in library and information science, with an emphasis in archival science.

She’s spent time on the records advisory board at the Minnesota Historical Society, and worked extensively with museums and historical re-enactments.

In addition, McCaughtry hopes to increase programming that ties to rural communities, as well as arts, music, nature and more.

She will “keep improving on the collection” of materials, and hopes to hold readers’ advisories “where I talk about books” and do book reviews.

A new website is also in the works; a link will be available on the city’s new website, which should be launched by January.

“We’ll have our events on there,” McCaughtry said of the library’s site, “and a lot more choices to pick and choose for getting information about this library – and the resources here and shared through Owatonna.”

In the meantime, she suggests anyone with questions or comments send an email to bpbl@selco.info, which goes directly to her.