A petting zoo, a snowstorm in July and a sushi-making class have all brought people to the Oglethorpe County Library over the past year.
“I’m kind of a pioneer personality type,” Oglethorpe County Library manager Katherine Ratcliffe said. “If something is going to blow up in our face or succeed spectacularly, that’s the event I want to do.”
The team's creativity led it to win the Athens Regional Library System 2024 Most Valuable Team Award. The system encompasses 11 libraries in five counties with more than 100 staff members.
This is the first time the Oglethorpe County Library has won the award.
“We were really, really honored to win when there’s so many wonderful and so many large, wonderful libraries nearby,” Ratcliffe said.
The Oglethorpe County library team has four members: Ratcliffe, Nicole Hensley, Jessica Ellis and Laura Lindsey.
Ratcliffe is the only full-time employee while the rest of her team is part-time. However, she credits the team with working well together and supporting each other’s ideas to the success of the library.
Hensley, the young adult specialist, targets middle and high school students to stay involved with the library as they grow older. As a team, they work to create programming that appeals to both children and adults.
“I think it was just a change in how we looked at our programming and trying to do something that was fun for all ages, to try to get more middle schoolers and high schoolers involved,” she said.
One of the library’s goals for 2025 is to implement play cards — an idea that has been successful in Clarke and Franklin counties.
These cards would allow children in the Oglethorpe County School System to register with the library, with their parent’s permission and check out up to two books at a time, either a physical copy or a digital book.
“It’s basically just a wonderful way for a lot of children, all at once, to access two books they may not have at home,” Ratcliffe said. “It would be a big lift for us because it does take the entire community coming together.”
For the holiday season, Ratcliffe hopes to continue the theme of community.
“We’re not just here to check out library books,” Ratcliffe said. “We’re here to connect with human beings and just have a great time while we do it, and we take a lot of pride in that.”