Bethany Griffith is in her eighth and final year on the Johnson County Library Board, with a term that ends May 1, 2024. And she’s going out on top, serving through next April in the important post as Library Board Chair.
She’s experienced a critical time of growth and change. She looks forward to this next year, providing strong volunteer leadership for an organization whose public mission she cherishes and champions.
“It has been a real joy to get to advocate strongly for the Library,” Griffith said in an interview, “for our budget, for our staff, for getting us back open during COVID and for whatever is facing our communities.”
She is determined that the Library will continue to provide access to information and enrichment, to sustain an educated, thriving citizenry.
“We’re not gatekeepers of ideas. We don’t pick and choose what it is people have access to,” she emphasized. “Hopefully in the Library you can find information, ideas, support, things that are beautiful and wonderful.”
Griffith majored in philosophy and politics at Hendrix College in Arkansas and met her future husband James during a junior year abroad at Oxford. The couple married and lived in the United Kingdom for seven years before they relocated in 2006 to Lenexa, where James is an information technology professional. They had a son and daughter, and Griffith developed a deep appreciation for the children’s section and Storytimes at the Lackman branch.
She was appointed to the Library board in 2016 by then-County Commissioner John Toplikar, who knew her as a home-school mom who highly valued the Library’s educational resources.
Initially, she thought the board was an advisory cheerleader for the system. But she quickly realized it had a much more significant policy governance function, for one of the county’s most vital services. She has always been fond of community engagement and embraced that responsibility.
“Although it was a surprise,” she said, “it actually has been a really good fit.”
Her first vote was to fund the collection for the new Monticello branch. She was a key liaison overseeing the building of the beautiful Lenexa City Center branch that opened in 2019. She was a strong advocate for getting Library branches back open as soon as possible, safely, during COVID. And she pushed for years to eliminate fines for overdue materials, another strategy that enhances access. The fines-free policy was approved in April 2023.
Griffith says COVID revealed the need for administrative succession planning, which led to more cross-training and a leadership studies grant allowing staffers to continue to learn and advance in their fields. Johnson County Library now presents this organizational blueprint at professional conferences, and Griffith wants to see that staff support solidified in her final year. She also realizes she has considerable institutional knowledge to pass along to newer board members over the next year, “to facilitate leaving a board just as engaged, healthy, vibrant and committed as it was when I got here.”
As Libraries nationwide deal with book ban petitions and other challenges, Griffith wants the public to know that Johnson County Library has clearly-written thorough policies and procedures, grounded in legal precedent. “We’ve done the best that we can to make the system opinion neutral. You can access stuff and it’s up to you as a parent, you as an individual, to decide which things you engage with,” she said.
Heading into an election year, Griffith sees a crucial role for the Library to support democracy and civic engagement. Her vision is clear: “That the Library should be a safe place for every single citizen, for every taxpayer. The fact that it’s nonpartisan I think is incredibly important. There are books, stories here for every type of person. This Library is for every single citizen.”