Rotarian of the Day, Melissa Trammell, arranged for director of the Winn Parish Library, Priscilla Massey, to visit with local Rotarians on December 3, 2025.
Ms. Massey posed the most common question asked by members of the public these days: are Brick and Mortar libraries now obsolete, in light of the current state of technology and the World Wide Web?
The answer, according to Massey, is a resounding NO!
Libraries today, including our Winn Parish Library, offer many more services and programming than just lending paper books to library card holders.
The WPL is an office/business where our citizens can conduct online research, access their email accounts, make copies, print documents, send faxes, use computers for reading news and other articles, read magazines in paper form and electronic form. It is also an information center for finding historical and genealogical information, as well as accessing the Louisiana Digital Library.
The Winn Parish Library has 5 branches in Atlanta, Calvin, Dodson, Sikes and Winnfield, where citizens can check out paper books as well as DVDs. The Atlanta, Calvin and Dodson branches collectively had over 25,000 library visits in the last year.
Each branch except Sikes offers in person special programming, and over 5000 people attended special programs at our library’s branches over the last year.
The Winnfield branch has a meeting room offered free to the public as long as it is reserved in advance.
As technology advances, the library is investing more money in its digital and electronic resources than its physical assets. Those who have a library card can access various such resources onsite and remotely at Winnlibrary.org and select several services subscribed to by our library.
Winn Parish library cardholders who sign up for access to digital library services have access to over 60,000 publications through the GreenGold Library, a consortium of libraries in Louisiana which pool their electronic and audio collections to offer them to the cardholders of each library in the consortium. This library is accessible 24/7 to its users.
The Winn Parish Library in its various locations remains as essential and provides even more services and resources to the community than ever, especially to persons who lack computer and internet resources in their homes. Priscilla Massey encourages every citizen of Winn Parish to visit your local branch to learn about and make use of all available library resources.