Normal Public Library launches Little Free Pantry for community

Image courtesy of the Normal Public Library

NORMAL, Ill. – A new community resource is now available inside the Normal Public Library, where staff have launched a Little Free Pantry aimed at helping meet the everyday needs of patrons and the broader community.

Morgan Bueza, a library assistant, and Laura Golaszewski, the library’s patron experience manager, said the idea for the pantry emerged from ongoing conversations about food insecurity and their firsthand experiences serving the community.

“We had a staff development day last year, and we had been thinking about those issues,” Bueza said. “Being people who work with the public at a public library, we also run into a lot of different community members who have different social service needs.”

Bueza said the idea eventually made its way through the library’s equity, diversity and inclusion group, where it gained strong internal support.

“One of the ways that we felt that we could maybe begin to support some of those needs was with offering a Little Free Pantry,” she said. “We had a lot of institutional support, and so we went ahead in trying to establish a Little Free Pantry on-site.”

The initiative originally started as a way to support library staff before expanding to serve the public.

“The staff share started as a response to the rising food costs and the shrinking social safety net that was impacting not only our patrons, but also our staff,” Golaszewski said. “Everyone needs to eat, and you can’t really show up to work and serve the public if you’re hungry.”

After seeing the impact internally, staff recognized the need to extend the resource to patrons.

“We noticed that if we’re trying to help somebody access library resources and they are dealing with hunger at the time, it’s a lot harder for them to follow along,” Golaszewski said. “So it was a tool for our staff as well to be able to offer to our patrons something to ease their experience here.”

Library leaders say the pantry addresses a real and ongoing need in the community.

“I’ve come into contact with a lot of different patrons that have very pressing needs, like personal, nutritional needs,” Bueza said. “Those really take a toll on their interactions and their abilities to just go through the basic functions of life.”

The pantry is stocked daily with donations, and staff say certain items are especially needed.

“I would say right now what we could use most are breads, crackers, tuna packs, canned chicken, things like that,” Golaszewski said. “Those more small, portable, nonperishable snack foods seem to go really well here.”

Community members are encouraged to both use and support the pantry.

“They’re welcome to come and bring something in and also help spread the word,” Bueza said. “The ethos of the Little Free Pantry is that it really is for everybody. You don’t have to leave something because you took something. If you have the ability to do that, then that would be great, but it doesn’t have restrictions on who can use it.”

With the pantry now open, staff hope it becomes a shared community resource. Helping meet immediate needs while making the library an even more welcoming space for everyone.