About Monona Public Library

Mission Statement: "The Monona Public Library enriches lives by building community connections, fostering imagination, and opening up a world of ideas."

The Monona Public Library recognizes the following values:
- Passionately advocates for literacy and lifelong learning
- Provides free access to information and services for a diverse population through a variety of formats
- Supports, cultivates, and celebrates our staff
- Works every day to ensure trust, accountability, and privacy to our patrons
- Creates a welcoming environment for all that promotes and practices our commitment to equity, inclusion, and diversity

Equity Statement:
Monona Public Library is committed to learn, plan, share, implement, and engage in anti-racism.   

The Monona Public Library works to be a public institution that is trusted by the community. The library must do everything in its power to stand and fight with those who receive, and are targets of racist and xenophobic language and actions, including, but not limited to, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and Indigenous people. Our mission statement is, “The Monona Public Library enriches lives by building community connections, fostering imagination, and opening up a world of ideas.” We believe we cannot build community connections, nor enrich the lives of those in the community, while remaining silent . Neutrality has no place when it comes to racism. 

The Monona Public Library is meant to be a place for everyone. We recognize the role public libraries have historically held when it comes to implicit and structural racism. And though public libraries have taken some strides for change for good, there still is much to be done. For too long change has been slow and lacking in scope at the library. This needs to change, and our first steps at Monona Public Library are to examine  our policies, operations, and daily interactions with those who trust us enough to come through our doors. Library leadership, as well as the Board of Trustees, will continue to provide training and professional development opportunities around diversity, equity, and inclusion for all staff. 

The Library as Platform
Monona Public Library will use its platform to amplify voices that continue to be systematically oppressed. We will do this within our programs, and through bolstering our collections by purchasing materials that contain marginalized voices. We will actively seek more representation with our performers, speakers, and partners that we work with to ensure we are representing the voices of all people in our community.

Library Staff and Committee Recruitment
The Monona Public Library recognizes that there needs to be a concerted effort to have a more diverse staff that serves the public, especially in library leadership and representatives on the Board of Trustees. We also recognize that we are in a unique position in that the library is a City department that interacts with the public face to face every day. We will work along with other City departments to diversify our City workforce. We encourage anyone interested in helping the library make positive change to the Monona community to consider serving on the library board.

Community Feedback
Build community connections. Foster imagination. Open up a world of ideas. Enrich the community. Monona Library staff  will continue to do this, and in ways that address the racism and bigotry we both see and don’t see. We welcome and encourage the public to provide feedback on how we can be better. If you would like to provide feedback, you can fill out an online form (be sure to check Library under departments). You can also email our director directly. Finally, we welcome public feedback at the Library Board meetings, held at the library every third Tuesday of the month at 7:00pm. We will continue working with professional organizations and openly receive feedback on how we can improve. 

Monona Public Library recognizes that equity, diversity, and anti-racism needs to be a top priority. We can and must do better. 

We are members of the South Central Library System and are also a LINK member library which provides its members access to nearly 3 million items representing 790,000 different titles.

The Monona Public Library is operated by the City of Monona to serve its community and the residents of the South Central Library System (Dane, Columbia, Green, Portage, Adams, Sauk, and Wood Counties). Monona library cards are honored at all of the public libraries and bookmobiles in the South Central Library System and throughout most of Wisconsin.