An exciting time of change for Klonicki

Geri Nikolai
gmnikolai@gmail.com
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Emily Klonicki is the youth services director and assistant director at the main branch of the Rockford Public Library.

 [ARTURO FERNANDEZ/RRSTAR.COM]

After getting her library of science master’s degree, Emily Klonicki held administrative library jobs in Belvidere, Hampshire and Freeport. About a year ago, she came home to Rockford and the Rockford Public Library.

“I love this community, I love this library,” Klonicki said. “I love all libraries filled with talented, passionate people with a lot of vision.”

She’s working at an exciting place as the library plans to meet the information needs of the future with state-of-the-art technology in a new state-of-the-art building.

Klonicki also is excited for the work happening at the library under the current strategic plan. The goals laid out for the next three years are to build job skills and foster entrepreneurship in the community, promote and exemplify diversity and inclusion, close the school readiness gap for kindergartners, and support reading proficiency and skill in grade school students. With these community-oriented goals, the Rockford Public Library’s offerings and resources are changing and growing.

It’s an exciting time, Klonicki said. Books remain the library’s mainstay, but the way people find information is changing.

“Libraries have to be nimble and respond to that,” Klonicki said. “We need to make the library even more relevant and meaningful.”

Some ways that already is happening are the offerings in such things as small-business operation, art and culture, 3-D printing, sewing, laser cutting and other topics.

Klonicki also is active in the Rockford Area Arts Council and Music Academy of Rockford. She and her husband, Jeremy, parents of children 2 and 12 years old, also operate MainFraiM, a framing/design/lighting shop at 3022 Wallin Ave., where they share a building with five other artists.

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