Annie Busch looks back at career as a problem-solver who led Library transformation into digital age

IN-DEPTH

Proof that the Springfield-Greene County Library District was a pioneer in adopting electronic technology is its elegant, elemental internet domain name: thelibrary.org

Others’ are more complicated. The St. Louis Public Library’s is slpl.org. The Kansas City Library’s is kclibrary.org. The New York City Public Library’s is nypl.org. And so on. 

That’s because the singularly simple “thelibrary.org” already was taken. And the person responsible for propelling the local library system to the forefront of expansion from traditional ink-on-paper books to 21st Century electronic media and access is Annie Busch.

The district’s director from 1989 to 2008, Annie provided most Ozarkers with their first opportunity to log onto the internet by organizing ORION, the Ozarks Regional Information Online Network, in the mid-1990s. 

A role model for other women taking on leadership roles in the community, Annie has been a force to be reckoned with, whether in numerous community volunteer roles (some of which she continues to this day), or in pushing for creation of more modern facilities, including The Library Center, Library Station and the library branch on Park Central Square.

“But it wasn’t just me,” she protests in recalling those innovative days. “You can’t do it without a team. We had a great team. And I had a good Board (of Trustees) that trusted me. Everybody was committed to making our libraries everything that they could be. We made a lot of changes, a lot of advances.”

And Annie made a few waves in the process, too.

“I was accused of promoting pornography,” she says with a chuckle, recalling when sexually oriented sites proliferated during the early days of the internet. And some questioned the wisdom of acquiring a failed lumber yard and hardware retail complex on the then-semi-rural southwest edge of Springfield — “It’s halfway to Nixa!” one critic complained — to establish the new “main library” and administrative offices, dubbed The Library Center.

Intrigued by ‘network’ project at Mizzou

ORION came first. Annie got wind of a project in Columbia that intrigued her. The University of Missouri had, in the mid-1980s, developed a network that linked computer terminals on the four-campus (Columbia, Rolla, St. Louis and Kansas City) system to send electronic messages and share files. By the early ’90s, it had expanded into MOREnet, the Missouri Research and Education Network, connecting to some other schools around the state.

The public library and public schools in Columbia wanted in on it. “They wanted to provide a community information network so that local residents and students could access the library remotely,” Bill Mitchell, director of MOREnet for Mizzou at the time, recounted by phone from his retirement home in Arizona. So the Columbia Online Information Network — COIN — was born.

“Well, Annie heard about COIN and got ahold of me and said, ‘We want one of those down here,’” says Mitchell. “I told her that another community had already asked, and that maybe we could put Springfield on the list after that. But Annie said, ‘Nope! We want to be next!’ 

“She is very inspirational — and very competitive! So it turned out that we came to Springfield next and helped set up what became ORION.”

The way Annie remembers it: “I just told Bill that it was becoming obvious that the internet was going to be very important, not just for academics but for the general population as well. I give him a lot of credit because he encouraged me and educated me. He helped me learn what I needed to know about the technology and its big-picture possibilities.”

5,000 users in first four months

ORION went live in May of 1994. In its first four months of operation some 5,000 users  registered to log on for free, dialing into the library’s bank of modems over landline telephone from their homes or offices. Over the next four years, that total quadrupled to 20,000 users. 

At first traffic was limited to text only, but by 1996 ORION users could access the then-new World Wide Web. By 2001, however, enough higher-speed commercial internet service providers had come into being that ORION no longer was needed as a gateway to get Ozarkers online. But it is fondly and gratefully remembered by those who used it.

“We came a long way in a short period of time,” says Annie — who herself had come a long way from her original hometown of Goodman, a McDonald County community of 400, so small that it didn’t have a public library.

“A bookmobile came to town once a month. There was a drug store, and they had magazines to sell. Some of us would go in there, buy a soda and sit and read the magazines, then put them back on the shelf. But that was about it.”

Annie’s father was the town postmaster. “My dad knew everyone, planned everything, even the Christmas parade. He was there for the community. But he died when I was in the 7th grade. Mother decided to move us — I had an older brother — to Neosho when I was a sophomore in high school. It was a good decision because the school system was better there. I was secretary of the senior class and played clarinet in the school band. I graduated in 1965.”

Annie next enrolled as a freshman at Cottey College, a private school for girls in Nevada, Mo. However, she only stayed one year there. “Growing up in Goodman, there weren’t that many girls my age living in town. So I hung out with the boys. I played ball, I climbed trees — I was a great tree-climber. But when I got to Cottey, there were all these refined young ladies. I didn’t fit in very well. And it was expensive.”

Annie transferred to Mizzou and majored in sociology and psychology. Her first job after graduation? “Getting married,” she says with a laugh. Annie Chancellor became Annie Keller.

From Navy pilot’s wife to single mom

“I was a Navy pilot’s wife — and that really was a job. We moved to Florida to Texas to California as he went through pilot training, and then he did a tour in Vietnam and a second one in the Philippines.” His service extended into a third overseas tour — but the marriage did not.

“Suddenly I was a single mom with a 1-year-old son. I didn’t know what to do at first, but I had a friend who was going to get her master’s degree in library science back in Columbia. I liked that idea, so I came back to Missouri and earned my master’s, too.”

Annie’s first library job was in the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, where she became manager of one of the largest branches in the system there. “It was good experience,” she says. “I learned about the financial side of things with public libraries. So it was worthwhile time spent.”

In the early 1980s, by then Annie Linnemeyer, she moved to Springfield and took a job as a salesperson for an office supply company. However, she soon was hired as reference librarian at the Kickapoo Prairie branch, which was located on Republic Road west of Campbell Street. In 1985, she was named manager of the branch. And four years later she took the reins of the entire Springfield-Greene County system.

That’s when the team-building began. Jeanne Duffey was the district’s community relations manager. “Jeanne did a great job of explaining and promoting what we were doing, and educating the public about it,” Annie says.

Duffey was impressed with Annie’s vision for the future of libraries and how to meet the challenges that lay ahead. “She was forward-looking, and was not one to say, ‘Oh my goodness, what’s going to happen to libraries as all this new technology comes along?’ Annie would say, ‘Well, this is what we can do with that technology.’ She knew books weren’t going to go away. Radio didn’t go away when TV came along — it just adapted. Annie instinctively knew that’s how things would work with libraries.

“Annie gave me the chance to promote the best product — libraries,” says Duffey. “I got to know librarians, and I learned that what they want to do is give patron service. They have passion and enthusiasm — and Annie, as the head of the organization, set that tone.”

‘She hired people and then trusted them to do their job’

Lorraine Sandstrom, who first worked with Annie at the Kickapoo Prairie branch, echoes Duffey’s assessment of their boss. “She hired people and then trusted them to do their job.”

Sandstrom says Annie “recognized that we didn’t have a choice, that we had to keep up with technology or we’d get lost in the sauce. She knew it was important to keep growing and changing. That’s what kept us moving forward — her conviction that we had to keep up, that technology was here and that we needed to use it. She hired a great technology guy, David Patillo. He was able to see how we could use new technologies.”

Patillo “was an amazing I.T. guy,” says Annie. “David was open to trying new things, starting new things. He never held back. He was so helpful to me, explaining technology in terms that I could understand. And he was the one who knew how to get ‘thelibrary.org’ for us since we were one of the very first libraries in the country to provide internet service to the public.”  (Patillo was claimed by COVID-19 in 2021 at age 52.)

Sandstrom says it was “the opportunity of a lifetime” to be on Annie’s team when The Library Center project was hatched in the late 1990s. “Annie let me do fun stuff. She gave me the opportunity to be involved with the planning, working with the architects in designing it, selling it to the public by letting them know what was going on and what it was going to be. And then, when it opened (in the fall of 1999), I got to be the branch manager.”

The sprawling former lumber-hardware center in the 4600 block of South Campbell Avenue, with 83,000 square feet under roof on a 22-acre tract, was purchased from Payless Cashways for $2.7 million — a  “50 cents on the dollar” bargain price in Annie’s estimation. The total cost of acquisition and remodeling was about $6 million. The no-longer-needed Kickapoo Prairie branch building was sold for $2 million, about $1 million was obtained through a public fund-raising campaign, and $3.1 million was provided by tax-anticipation bonds.

In addition to retaining some 200,000 books and expanding the existing local history and genealogy department, the new main branch introduced innovations such as drive-through service, a gift shop, a coffee shop-cafe, and large meeting rooms available for public gatherings and presentations.

And, of course, some 60 computer workstations for public use.

“A good example of Annie’s attention to detail and her dedication to patron service was setting up The Edge, which is a computer training center, in the Midtown Carnegie branch,” notes Duffey. “We were giving this new thing, the internet, to the public — but how would they know how to use it? Well, if someone wanted to learn how to use a computer or to learn how to use some software, they could just go over there and receive instruction. And they still can — The Edge is still there at Midtown.”

Hiring Annie ‘smartest thing we ever did’

Annie’s thoroughness also impressed members of the library district’s Board of Trustees.

“I was on a lot of boards before I retired,” says former banker Andy Montebello, a library trustee for six years in the 1990s, “and Annie had the most organized presentations to the board of any I was on. She was broadly involved in serving the people of Springfield and Greene County. She really recognized the value of serving the community.”

Another trustee back then, attorney Tom Peebles, agrees: “Being on the search committee of the board that hired Annie as director of the library system is my biggest claim to fame. It is the smartest thing we ever did.

“From the beginning, Annie’s vision and foresight was so much greater than anyone else’s. She guided the board and staff in developing innovative ways to provide greater access to the library services and to enhance the library experience for patrons. Annie was a great steward of financial resources, and she understood the importance of leveraging public resources with private charitable donations to achieve results that very few library districts could duplicate.”

Annie’s awareness of community needs and her sensitivity to public perceptions led her to launch other major innovative projects beyond ORION and The Library Center.

“I knew we needed to do something on the north side (of Springfield) to balance The Library Center on the south side. People on that side of town needed to feel like they were getting something special, too. That’s how the Library Station happened.”

A 35,000-square-foot former Heilig-Meyers furniture store, in the 2500 block of North Kansas Expressway, was purchased in 2002 and, at a total cost of $4.3 million, was transformed into a modern library with decor that acknowledges Springfield’s heritage in the transportation industry — railroads, Route 66, Interstate 44, trucking freight terminals, Springfield-Branson National Airport, and even the old Springfield Wagon Company.

Annie also pushed for establishing the Park Central branch in the southwest quadrant of the Square. “Students were moving downtown, apartments were going in, and I just thought it made sense for that population to have access — convenient access — to library services,” she explains. It opened in 2008, just a few months before she retired.

Retirement offered time for school board, community activism

Was there anything else she wanted to do but didn’t get done before stepping down?

“No, not really,” Annie says. “I don’t think I would’ve retired when I did if I’d felt there was something major that needed to be done. I’m not saying that everything is perfect, but there was no ‘next big step’ that needed to be taken, nothing that needed to be fixed or changed. The board had always been so supportive, the staff was so supportive, and for the most part the community was so supportive of whatever we wanted to do.”

Although no longer running the library system, Annie — she has been married to former Springfield City Manager Don Busch for almost 30 years — has tried to stay busy the past 16 years, although she has been somewhat slowed recently by health issues at age 77.

She served one three-year term on the Springfield school board, where she championed expansion of early childhood education, along with dyslexia education and other issues.

“I’m a problem solver. I read constantly. I love to research. Right now I’m working on the lack of day care in our community. I was a single mother for a long time, and I know how hard it was to find day care and work at the same time. Doing research is something I still can do. So I’ve been finding what’s out there, finding what’s being done to solve the problem in other places, finding out what we maybe should be doing here.

“Another of my passions for the last few years has been homelessness. I’ve had a group called Integrated System of Services, and we’ve been trying to bring groups together to address these problems. I believe we all have to work together; no one group can do everything.

“I’ve always wanted to make things easier for people. I’ve wanted people to have access to things that they need. I’ve wanted to be helpful. So I just keep plugging away at it as best I can…”