The City of Tupelo and Lee County already serve as an important destination for much of north Mississippi, northwest Alabama, and southwest Tennessee. Our goal is to create a destination library that will not only actively serve our surrounding communities, but amplify and energize initiatives attracting people, businesses, and tourism to our region.

What is a destination library?

We see destination libraries as dynamic, forward-thinking organizations, serving as active partners for enhancing local quality of life, strengthening economic growth, and sharpening a community’s competitive edge. We can accomplish these objectives in a number of important ways—serving as valuable force multipliers, important community assets, powerful economic engines, and strategic partners.

Recent research supports these findings. Strong schools and vibrant public libraries are two community resources that families quickly evaluate when considering a move to a new area. These and other educational or cultural amenities make a real difference when recruiting companies and a highly skilled workforce. Libraries also serve as force multipliers in place-based development by anchoring mixed-use projects, attracting consistent traffic and contributing to the emergence of economically dynamic spaces.

The presence of libraries, parks, restaurants, culture-based organizations, and an active retail landscape increase property values, with many individuals willing to pay more for housing that is “closer to valued community amenities.” Libraries are also well-positioned to play a key role in developing a “thriving and connected workforce ecosystem,” by providing training for job seekers and serving as an employment pipeline to other organizations. This is due to the fact that libraries possess a “proven ability to assess patrons’ needs, support lifelong learning, cultivate trust throughout the community and forge strong partnerships with outside organizations.”

Libraries today are about people. Our library spaces should therefore be arranged, renovated, designed, and presented with our patrons in mind. In both our downtown Tupelo and Fulton locations, our teams are feeling the positive pressure of growing collections and record turnout for high-demand programs, combined with aging buildings and constraining footprints. Now is the time to develop the plans and partnerships that will be necessary to construct a new flagship location in downtown Tupelo.

Together, we will serve as the most vibrant and forward-thinking library in our region.

We are learning.

Our working group is undergoing a four-step process to develop a project portfolio outlining the needs, priorities, desired details, and action plans necessary to deliver a destination library to our community. Specifically, we will be exploring the reasons driving the need for change, including high demand for library services and the physical space limitations that we are encountering. We will collect and examine important data about library usage, statistics, trends, and requirements that will enable the creation of a next-generation library for our community. We will examine recent expansions and renovations at other libraries that have transformed their spaces and services, and we will flesh out specific needs and goals so that central priorities for a new space are clearly understood. The four-phase process is below: