Dougherty

BEAMAN — Libraries are more than a place to access free reading materials. They’re often the hub of a community and keeper of local history. For Sarah Dougherty, her love of reading and research was the right combination for her role as director of the Beaman Community Memorial Library. She retired in June, but has agreed to stay on until the end of July to help with summer programming and assisting her replacement, Dana Brown.

A Conrad native, she is a BCLUW High School grad. She got a degree in history from the University of Northern Iowa, then went on to Texas Tech University, where she earned a degree in museum science.

“I didn’t want to teach. I didn’t think I could hold it together in front of a classroom day after day,” she said with a laugh. “So I tried museum work, and thoroughly enjoyed that too. I’m still volunteering for the museum in Conrad, and will volunteer at the Heritage Center (located inside the Beaman library).”

In the past, Dougherty worked at the Kansas Historical Society in Topeka, the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison, Kansas, and Shawnee County Museum in the Kansas City area. She also did a stint at Hallmark in Kansas City, MO in its fine arts collection, noting the company’s world-renowned photograph collection.

Outside of the Midwest, she worked at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, WY.

Before coming back to Iowa, she did an independent project cataloging, researching and inventorying a large collection of railroad memorabilia, including several railroad cars, for Kansas City Museum (at the time part of Union Station).

“They hired me then as a registrar for the museum collections. I started that in 2007 and left in 2012 when we moved here,” she noted. “My mother had died a couple years before that, and the house was on the market, and nobody was looking at it. My husband Steve is from Waterloo, and we both have family around Iowa, and we thought it might be nice to be closer to them, and we took on the house.”

She got a job at Casey’s in Conrad. While she enjoyed the social aspect of working with the public, the job didn’t utilize her love of reading and history. She was then approached about serving the library in Beaman.

“I really lucked into this job in 2017. I got a letter from one of the board members asking if I’d be interested. We had met somewhere previously, and I thought, yeah, that would be a really fun job,” she said.

Dougherty described the early days as library director being a “steep learning curve.” However, getting to plan programming and order books for the catalog was a fun aspect of the role.

“I’ve refreshed a couple of sections of the library, like the young adult, and added new things, like Manga and graphic novels, and library of things that people can check out: sewing machine, binoculars, Bluetooth speaker, a hot spot — things people might not have at home,” she said of her efforts.

The Beaman library recently received its Public Library Accreditation certification, valid through June 30, 2029. It is classified as a Tier 3 library, which is considered fully accredited, meeting at least 67 standards.

“We’ve been accredited for a long time. My predecessor was really good about keeping that up and was very proud of being able to do so, and so was I,” she said. “We’re a size A library — the smallest (under 500 population). Although I discovered recently that there are 14 libraries in Iowa that are in towns smaller than Beaman.”

Duties included gathering statistics on indoor traffic, numbers that attended programs, providing educational opportunities and information for the board, and weeding out materials that are outdated, worn out or rarely checked out.

She noted she spent the COVID-19 shutdown scanning materials from the Heritage Center and putting them on Iowa Heritage Digital Collections.

“I did that so our museum had a presence there,” she said.

The Heritage Center chronicles the town, neighboring farms, churches, rural schools, cemeteries, local organizations, businesses and obituaries in the form of binders and clippings. She noted Memorial Day celebrations have been going on in Beaman annually since the 1880s.

“I spent quite a bit of time at one point trying to research what schools had the certain colors, because someone sent me a patch that had a ‘B’ on it. They thought it was from a Beaman school, but it wasn’t our colors,” Dougherty recalled.

Her plans for retirement include gardening, traveling, camping and spending time with family.

“I found Beaman a wonderful place to be. There are some great people there and it’s my adopted community. I was really happy to get to know them,” she said.

The Beaman Community Memorial Library recently updated its hours: Tuesdays 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Wednesdays 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.; closed Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

The library may be reached at: 641-366-2912 and bcmlib@heartofiowa.net.