Four Library Lockers Show What Supporting Billings Public Library Can Build

A library card can do plenty from inside a grand building. After hours, a Library Express Locker provides self-service access to library materials.

The Billings Public Library Foundation reports that four Library Express Locker locations are operating around the community, putting self-service pickup beyond the main library’s walls and schedule. For residents who cannot reach the main branch during open hours, the lockers provide self-service pickup after hours. No parking-lot sprint before closing. No need to make the library’s hours fit a workday.

That is the strongest reason to support a public library in Billings, MT through Billings Public Library Foundation Inc. The Billings Public Library Foundation makes private philanthropy feel usefully physical.

It builds access points, equipment, and learning spaces that let residents use library services when they cannot reach the main branch during open hours.

How to support a public library in Billings MT beyond the circulation desk

The locker network is only one route outward. The foundation supports the Pedal Powered Library, a mobile service that carries library materials and free Wi-Fi across town. It also lists mobile hotspots among the things donor dollars fund, alongside laptops and teen labs. For students whose internet connection has a weak spot, a hotspot is library service in the place homework actually happens.

Then there is the CO+Lab, the library’s makerspace, where specialized equipment and cutting-edge tools turn curiosity into something hands-on. CO+Lab gives residents access to specialized equipment and cutting-edge tools through programs built for creativity, learning, and collaboration.

The foundation also sponsors 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten, an early-literacy program built around the wonderfully unglamorous work of reading with young children again and again. Those repetitions become habits. The foundation’s donor Nick and Linda Cladis put the ambition plainly:

“We believe that reading to a child will set them up for a lifetime of successes.” —Nick and Linda Cladis, Donors

A long-running case for the public extra

Royal Johnson founded the foundation in 1988 to raise private funds and endowments for Billings Public Library. That history matters because the organization has kept its attention on additions that residents can touch: access points, technology, programming, and places to gather.

Diane and Mark Gorder carried that same civic instinct into the Heritage Garden at the library, which they envisioned, funded, and helped dedicate to honor family members and the Yellowstone Valley’s heritage. As they said, “Financial success comes with an obligation to give back to the communities which contributed to that success.”

The foundation’s IRS data reports $556,000 in revenue, $254,000 in expenses, and $5.0 million in assets; with two staff members and 14 volunteers, it is a compact operation directing private support toward public-facing library improvements.

A donation can put a mobile hotspot in the hands of a student whose homework happens beyond a reliable home connection.

Put your gift where the door stays open

Give to the Billings Public Library Foundation to sustain mobile hotspots, laptops, teen labs, early childhood literacy, and the access infrastructure that makes all of it more available. Or volunteer at the annual Spring Book Swap, Food For Thought, or Royal Johnson Forum.

Four after-hours access points put library materials within reach beyond the main building’s schedule.