During the Wareham Free Library’s five-year strategic planning meeting on Saturday, Feb. 4, local residents and Library stakeholders “dared to dream” of bookmobiles, little free libraries, a café and more.

These “aspirations,” as management consultant Jessica Ellis-Wilson called them, were a chance for locals to imagine what the Library would look like if money was no object. 

Most of the meeting focused on more realistic goals, such as increasing traffic to the Library website, attracting a more diverse base of patrons, hiring more staff and obtaining municipal funds through Town Meeting. 

Along with increased fundraising and outreach opportunities, locals at the meeting wanted the Library to be open for more hours, feature a greater variety of children’s programming and market itself to the community more.

“We will need more staffing to support a lot of this,” Ellis-Wilson said. 

According to Ellis-Wilson, the town only funds 80% of the Library’s budget. 

Saturday’s meeting was the first since the Library was decertified in 2014, making it ineligible to receive state funding. The Library was recertified later that year, making it eligible once again. 

“I think the decertification really spurred a lot of us to get more involved,” Ellis-Wilson said.