Evanston RoundTable, July 16, 2025

Some fun facts about your Evanston Public Library:

• The nucleus of what might be considered Evanston’s first library came from a donation of books by Rebecca Mulford, wife of Major Edward Mulford, to the Methodist Episcopal Sunday School in 1854, nine years before the city was incorporated. In effect, the word preceded the deed. There is no estimate on the library’s history page for how many volumes Mrs. Mulford and the major brought with them when they left New York in 1833. Perhaps a few hundred?
• Today the library has some 315,000 books, CDs, DVDs, magazines and newspapers in its collection at 1703 Orrington Ave. and the Robert Crown Community Center branch at 1801 Main St. If you include EPL partnerships with other libraries, that number grows to 4.5 million.
• Last year the library hosted 440,000 visitors and almost 2,000 programs of lectures, book discussions, story times, workshops, classes, presentations and information sessions. More than 1 million items were checked out in 440,000 library visits and almost 7,000 kids 11 and younger attended EPL programs.
• In 2024 the library recorded almost $9.2 million in revenue, of which 89% came from the city property tax levy, with the remainder from gifts, donations, endowments, grants and other sources.
• The library offers innumerable services, many critical, including behavioral health services from Turning Point;career counseling and job training from National Able Network; brain and fitness programs for seniors; free meeting space for community groups; air quality monitors for checking out; The Teen Loft, a meeting space for teenagers with computers, gaming consoles, art supplies and more; and a makers lab called the Innovation Station with a 3D printer, laser cutter, sewing machines and Cricut cutting devices to create personalized items like mugs, hats, T-shirts and stickers.
• There are also teen STEM programs; book giveaways; Oakton Community College lectures; conversation classes in Spanish, French, Russian and other languages; the Books on Wheels van; a walk-in legal clinic; book clubs; and monthly art workshops.
• In addition an EPL engagement coordinator visits eight senior residential buildings monthly to provide library programs and services as well as bring requested books and DVDs.
• Other services include the reference desk for answers to many questions; the Blueberry Award for children’s books; ABC Boosters and Book Buddies, in which Evanston Township High School and Northwestern University students read to preschoolers; and numerous school visits. Even animals get some library love, too: the Reading to Cats program “lets kids practice literacy by reading to rescue cats,” according to the library’s annual report.
• Recent or upcoming lectures include “Cooling Foods, Hydration and Hormone Harmony for Midlife Women,” “Understanding the Maze of Medicare” (monthly) and “Issues in Medical Ethics: Treating Children.” See the library’s events page for a listing of lectures and activities.
• The library is also one of the city’s official cooling centers during heat waves, and offers a quiet resting place as well as critical social services to the city’s unhoused community.
• The main library building is 112,000 square feet, of which about 90,000 square feet — some 80% — is currently utilized. The rest is mostly storage areas and mechanical equipment.
• Ghost Writer, the extraordinary cast metal and stainless cable mobile that hangs 36 feet from the ceiling through the main staircase, was designed by American architects Ralph Helmick and Stuart Schechter. It consists of 2,500 separately cast aluminum elements suspended on 900 wires and was funded by the City of Evanston Public Art Program. The work represents “imagination and learning, a metaphor for the creative process,” Helmick writes on his website.
• Yolande Wilburn, who assumed the role of executive director of the library in November 2023 (and whose first name is pronounced Yōlan, with the “lande” rhyming with “wand”) has worked at more than half a dozen different library systems over the last 20 years, including Chicago Public Library, University of Chicago, Dubai and a number of California city and county systems: Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach, Nevada, Torrance and Santa Cruz, where she was recruited to come to Evanston.
• Her move here was a return of sorts. She was born at Cook County Hospital, lived in the Henry Horner Homes on Chicago’s Near West Side, and after relocating with her family to Glen Ellyn went to Glenbard West High School. During high school she held a number of part-time jobs, including sales and assistant manager at the Wieboldt’s store in York Town Mall.
• After graduating GBW, she and her mother moved to Evanston and lived for about a year on the 800 block of Brummel Street across from Hamlin Park.
• The early years of her working life were quite varied, including retail sales at Saks Fifth Avenue in Oakbrook and Citibank teller on the North Side of Chicago.
• During that time she enrolled in Columbia College, transferred to University of Illinois Circle campus (now the University of Illinois Chicago) and graduated with an online degree from University of Illinois Springfield. She originally studied accounting, “But I decided I didn’t want to be an auditor,” she said, laughing.
• Her first job after college took her around the country as a flight attendant with United Airlines, “because I loved to travel.”
• She owned and ran a flower shop in Indianapolis and later became the personnel and public affairs manager for Edco Recycling in Escondido, California. At Edco she started a college scholarship program for local high school students, which she researched at the local library. “There was something fulfilling doing this work. I found I was drawn to helping others,” she said, and realized the library was the place where “we offer information and resources.”
• Wilburn got her master’s degree in library sciences at San Jose State University in 2009.
• While getting her degree, she returned to Chicago and continued attending master’s classes remotely. Why here? “I grew up in the Chicago Public Library system, and I felt very strongly that I wanted to give back to the system that launched me and helped me get where I was.” Plus she wanted her young son to grow up in her home town and wanted to be near her parents.
• At CPL she worked at branches “all over town” — including Uptown, Bucktown, Humboldt Park, Lincoln Park and Austin, “doing whatever needed to be done — reference, circulation, children’s, even branch manager.”
• She convinced the CPL board to start a “maker space,” wrote the grant that paid for it and introduced the Innovation Lab at the Harold Washington Library, where her boss was former EPL executive director Karen Danczak Lyons, whom she succeeded in Evanston.
• Her own reading preferences run to nonfiction, audio books and the occasional “cozy” mystery, like M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth books.

After 18 months in her current position, Wilburn has a lot to say about the state of the Evanston Public Library, which she shared with me in a nearly two-hour interview and guided tour of the Orrington Avenue facility. Her job “is a pleasure” and she loves meeting library patrons, working with community partners and leading “a wonderful staff.” She has expanded programming and services, such as the new first-floor café and bringing in the social services agency Turning Point. Under consideration: opening parts of the library to community groups for after-hours use and even renting out the building for weddings.

Nevertheless, she is clear about the tremendous challenges the library faces.

As the RoundTable has reported before, the main library is 31 years old and requires an estimated $20 million in upgrades and repairs. Wilburn said the roof needs to be replaced at an estimated cost of $1.9 million. Other pressing infrastructure problems include leaky water heaters, elevator failures, insufficient electric outlets and carpets that need replacing. There have been power outages, blown transformers, sewer collapses and sewage backups.

“This building has to be fixed,” she said emphatically. “The people of Evanston deserve and I believe want a library that meets modern-day standards. It’s time, it has to be done.”

Seriously complicating the problem, however, is the fact that the library doesn’t own the Orrington Avenue and Main Street buildings; the city does. EPL pays $350,000 a year to the city for facility, payroll, HR, finance and other services. “So we want to be sure we’re getting the best bang for the buck we can,” Wilburn said. “We would like better service for what we’re paying.”

“If I had my druthers,” she added, “I’d love to see the city come up with about half what we need for renovation.” She pointed out that the EPL board “is firm that they do not want to spend $20 million on a building we don’t own, after which the city might say, ‘We want that building, get out.’ And then the library is stuck paying the bill, because the MOU [memorandum of understanding] contains no lease, there’s no guarantee that this is the library building for life.”

Outside consultant

To address the problem, EPL recently hired an outside consultant, James Rachlin, president of Meristem Advisors, who in 2020 helped the Aurora Public Library set up an independent library district. Wilburn said the library is hoping to have a preliminary report from Rachlin at its September budget meeting.

Unfortunately, the memorandum of understanding between the library and the city hasn’t been updated in years and is silent on some key points — such as the aforementioned lease — and ambiguous on others, leading to confusion as to who’s responsible for what. Asked whether that was the case in any other library district she’s worked in, she said no, adding “the relationships and services between us need to be clarified.”

Tracy Fulce, the library board’s president, characterized the connection between EPL and Evanston last year as a “very nebulous relationship with the city that has a cost to it.”

Wilburn said she’s talked with Mayor Daniel Biss and City Manager Luke Stowe, both of whom were sympathetic to the library’s financial and infrastructure problems. She pointed out, however, that many of the city’s own buildings need renovations, and further, any decision about the library would need to go in front of Evanston’s City Council. Conversations between the city and EPL about a revised MOU are ongoing.

Options with the city

Another option for the library is to break up with the city, like a romance gone sour. In February, Wilburn met with the City of Aurora’s library director to discuss the latter’s transition from a city-run library to an independent library district. Following suit in Evanston would enable EPL to issue its own bonds to raise funds for needed infrastructure repairs and equipment upgrades.

In Santa Cruz, California, Wilburn notes, voters approved a $67 million bond referendum in 2016 to renovate and rebuild the city’s 10 libraries, of which she was responsible for seven.

Rather than breaking up, on the other hand, the city and library could draw closer. One of the four options the city proposed for a new city hall last December was to relocate to the Orrington Avenue library, which has thousands of square feet of underused space. Moving city offices into the library would presumably enable both to save money. “It’s certainly something we’re open to exploring,” Wilburn said, though she’s doubtful the city will pursue that option, since the library is too small to accommodate all the city’s space needs, even if parts of the library were expanded.

Regardless of the city’s ultimate plans, Wilburn said, the library will continue to partner with the city on programming, while also exploring new partnerships, such as with the League of Women Voters and Shorefront Legacy Center. “We do a lot of programming with both of those organizations anyway,” she added, making them a good fit.

“This comes down to, ‘What are the services we’re getting, and is that in our best interest?’” she said. “If the city can’t meet our needs for the services that we have to have done, then it may make sense for us to separate. If we can get this done and get an MOU and get a lease signed that makes sense, then we’re happy to do that.”

Assuming it gets the money for a substantial renovation, the library has two options on how to proceed. It could shut down the whole building “and just get it done,” Wilburn said. Or it could renovate one floor at a time, which would be slower and generate noise and dust throughout the building. “I’d probably go for just closing it down altogether and relocating our services,” she said. “We already do a lot of things out in the community, and there are enough vacant storefronts in Evanston where we might be able to pop up in different places.” Aside from the Robert Crown branch, there are other community centers and city sites the library might find a home in, she added, pointing out the library already provides programs and services at Fleetwood-Jourdain and the Levy Senior Center.

Unhoused patrons

Another challenge for the library is how best to accommodate its homeless guests, as many as a dozen or more unhoused visitors who spend the day there. “Libraries all over the world have become the place where if you have no place to go, you can go to the library.” To best serve that community, Wilburn said, she brought in the social services agency Turning Point, which maintains a staffed desk on the main branch’s second floor every Thursday as well as a mobile van parked outside on Thursdays and Saturdays. On Fridays the social worker and van serve the Robert Crown branch. Wilburn noted that Turning Point staffers don’t just wait for people to come to them for help, but proactively seek out library visitors who might need or benefit from social service assistance.

She said for visitors who act up, “who might be having a mental health crisis that day,” there’s a code of conduct called Rules for Library Use (which starts with the directive, “Be respectful and do not interfere with other people using or working in the Library.”)

If guests can’t follow the rules, they’re asked to leave. Violations can lead to temporary or permanent suspension of library privileges. If in the worst case someone becomes violent, Evanston police and the CARE team are called in. “We don’t want our staff or any members of the public to get involved,” Wilburn said.

Thankfully, suspensions are infrequent. “We want everyone to feel like they can belong here,” Wilburn added.

How all these challenges play out remains to be seen. But EPL’s fiscal and infrastructure problems are clearly top of mind for Wilburn. And how successfully they’re resolved may determine whether she stays when her four-year contract expires in 2027.

In the meantime, she stands in good stead with her boss. “We’re continually impressed with the depth of her library knowledge and her skill in navigating complex situations,” said Tracy Fulce, library board president. “Yolande is an incredible professional with practical, hands-on experience as well as a strong theoretical background, a perfect blend that’s hard to find. Evanston is lucky to have her.”

Jewel in the crown

A beloved and critical Evanston institution, it’s impossible to overestimate the value the library provides the city. Along with the two Ys and Northwestern University, EPL is the jewel in the city’s crown.

“This is a community that loves its library,” Wilburn said. “My vision is to provide the library that Evanston deserves,” which includes bringing the Orrington Avenue building up to modern-day standards to maximize utilization and programming.

To do that will require a lot of hard work, imagination, millions of dollars in new funding and collaboration with the city.

Like a Stephen King novel, there will be many plot twists and turns — but hopefully, a satisfying ending.