LYNNFIELD — Director of the Lynnfield Public Library, Abigail Porter, outlined her budget outlook for the 2026 Fiscal Year to the Select Board Monday night, a presentation that also outlined the recent achievement of the library’s past couple of years.
During the meeting, Porter illustrated some of the numbers the library has from FY24, including 112,970 visitors, averaging 388 visitors per day, 95,655 items checked out, 9,309 reference questions answered, and 7,466 programs attended.
Something Porter thinks the library can take particular excitement in is the 2,321 books logged during that summer reading season, a number that is encouraged through yearly themed reading drives.
Grants and donations have also been another source of pride for the library, as they have fueled a popular seed library, 750 museum passes funded by the Friends of the Lynnfield Library, and a $6,000 grant to assess their genealogy collection.
“[The grant] will allow us to preserve that collection for a long time,” Porter said. “We have a lot of really valuable materials in there, and we’re really excited to have that plan going forward on how to take care of them to the best of our ability.”
Following this summation of recent achievements, Porter presented the library’s fiscal plan for FY26.
“We have certain certification requirements through the state. We have to hit the MAR, the Municipal Appropriation Requirement, which is the average of the last three years plus 3.5%,” she said.
They are also required to allocate 16% of the budget towards materials to meet the Material Appropriation Requirement (MER), a standard needed to get certification by the Massachusetts Board Of Library Commissioners.
In total, the budget comes out to $1,116,608, a 5.5% increase that, besides meeting the MAR and MER, includes the North Of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE) membership and an estimate of contractual increases that are currently being discussed.
Porter is also asking for a new full-time teen librarian position, a role that would be dedicated to crafting and executing programming that is centered around teenagers.
“We average at least 16 teens every day, even though we don’t have a teen room, which is really an incredible number considering they don’t really have their own space. They only have a table,” she said.
A part-time intern this fall worked three days a week in this position, which saw teenaged-focussed programming increase threefold and a 200% growth in kids visiting over the three months she worked at LPL.
Potential initiatives this librarian could help form include providing resources to help students with college applications, study groups, and book clubs.
To accommodate the new hire, the library is asking for finances to pay a salary of $54,558.40 with benefits.
“According to the Youth Risk Survey, only 50% to 52% of high school students have a trusted adult in the school,” Porter said. “Librarians are often trusted adults for teens. Having a teen librarian who is there to answer questions and build relationships would be really key to helping them.”
Examples of some of the teen programs that have been running recently include the “hugely popular” manga and anime clubs, a board game hangout on early release days, and a monthly book subscription kit.
This request follows the rejection at last month’s special election for the $18.3 million comprehensive LPL renovation that would’ve included a teen room.
While no capital requests were made Monday night, the failure of the expansion project means there will likely be regular requests in the future for renovations as, according to Porter, “there isn’t a single part of the library that doesn’t need some TLC.”
