Mason City library’s adult summer reading grows into year-round community program

Mason City Public Library’s adult summer reading program, begun in 2010, has expanded into a year-round set of events that library leaders say draws new users and strengthens community ties.

Mary Markwalter, director of Mason City Public Library, said the library launched the adult program after a renovation wrapped in 2010 and that about 200 people signed up the first year. “We thought we'd get 30, 40 people. And it's been wildly popular every year since then,” Markwalter said.

Markwalter said the program started as a low‑effort, passive reading challenge and gradually added activities and partnerships to keep participation high. The most visible additions are a live music series that runs Fridays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. between Memorial Day and Labor Day (and for three days between Christmas and New Year’s), and a monthly cookbook club that regularly draws about 30–35 attendees.

“The music series has been a big hit,” Markwalter said, noting local musicians often play for modest fees covered in part by her fundraising and matching contributions from the Friends of the Library and the library foundation. This year she raised about $2,000 that the Friends and the foundation matched.

Prizes tied to the reading program include local coffee‑shop gift cards, library sweatshirts and an overnight stay at the city’s historic park and hotel. The library also used materials from national programs and vendors, including prize items purchased through American Libraries’ iRead offerings.

Staff described partnerships with local organizations as important to programming variety. Markwalter cited a volunteer birds‑of‑prey group that did two shows for the library, and she named 3 Bells Books, a new independent bookstore in Mason City, as a frequent partner for prize purchases. The library also promotes databases — the adult services team subscribes to Food—America A to Z for the cookbook club — and provides book sets and other materials to support book clubs.

Attendance and membership numbers have risen alongside programming. Markwalter said Mason City has about 27,000 residents, Cerro Gordo County about 48,000, and that the library has roughly 28,000 active card members (up from about 4,000 in 2008, when she arrived). She noted meeting rooms are highly in demand and reservations have surged in recent months.

Markwalter said the library has kept the adult program intentionally simple in its early years to avoid intimidating staff and the public. “Start it simple so that you can get used to it and the patrons can get used to it,” she said. The library continues to run some prizes and reading challenges year‑round and matches adult programming thematically to youth services when useful.

Staff also experimented with larger, hands‑on offerings such as an escape room, which proved resource‑intensive to run on Saturdays and has been simplified. By contrast, the cookbook club combined a database tutorial with a potluck format that quickly became popular: attendees bring themed dishes and receive a short recipe collection from the meeting.

The conversation that prompted this interview began when an attendee at the 2024 Iowa Library Association conference mentioned Mason City’s adult summer reading program as an early example of a dedicated adult program; the host noted that state representative Sharon Stechman mentioned Mason City’s program at that conference. The library director said community pride in the library’s collections and programs has replaced earlier comments from visitors comparing other cities’ libraries to Mason City’s offerings.

Markwalter described patron feedback as a key measure of success and said she has received no complaints about the program. She added that public interest and use of facilities, not just raw signup numbers, signal impact: “Our meeting rooms, you can hardly get a reservation,” she said.

Looking ahead, Markwalter said the music series and summer programming were in place and being promoted; the library had anticipated possible shipping delays and stocked materials earlier in the season. She encouraged libraries that have not tried an adult program to begin small, keep it easy to join, and expand over time.

The host (state library staff member) closed by inviting other libraries to share local programs for possible feature on the Kernels series.