BAYARD TAYLOR: Library board's reaction to the name change

At their March 17 meeting, some members of the Kennett Public Library board spoke about the public reaction to their recent decision to change the library's name from the Bayard Taylor Memorial Library.
Both Library Director Donna Murray and trustee Geoff Birkett said they have heard overwhelmingly positive support for the name change among library patrons and the general public.
But board member Jim Nelson said the name change was highly unpopular and further eroded the board's credibility in the public's eye. He said the people he heard from were "almost totally against it" and were angry about "the way it was brought about," without any notice to the public ahead of a banner with the new name being hung across State Street as a fait accompli.
Mr. Birkett pointed to the 7 percent increase in library circulation in January and February 2015 versus the same period in 2014 as evidence that people are still using the library and thus support the change.
"If they were really worried about the name change they would've taken their cards home," he said, adding that "it's not a change of name, it's a change of brand, a change of emphasis."
Mr. Birkett said that despite the initial negative reaction on social media, only a few people showed up at the board's "listening sessions" after the name change was announced, and most of them supported it.
Joseph L. Sherwood, the Executive Director of the Chester County Library System, happened to be at the board meeting and suggested that the circulation increase was a function of the ice storm in February 2014 that shut down all the county libraries for several days.
(Ms. Murray disagreed with this suggestion; she told me the day after the meeting that the library was actually open fewer hours for the same period in 2015 than in 2014 -- 471 hours vs. 475 hours -- and the circulation numbers still rose by 7 percent.)
Board president Susan Mackey-Kallis said the library's development director, Maureen Snook, has applied for a $6,000 grant to catalogue the library's Bayard Taylor memorabilia. She said that just because the board stripped his name "doesn't mean we lose contact with that legacy."