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Three local Imagination Library programs have merged into one countywide effort, eliminating the need for families to switch programs when they move.
A free book-gifting program for children is expanding in Lane County.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library mails free books to children below the age of 5 every month. The late “Queen of Country” launched the program in her home state of Tennessee in 1995 before expanding it to other states, and later, countries across the globe.
Here in the southern Willamette Valley, three local Imagination Library programs that were once run and funded separately — Eugene, Springfield and greater Lane County — have joined forces to form a countywide Imagination Library program.
Leaders say the expansion will break down barriers that prevent families from signing up or consistently accessing the program, boosting early literacy across the county. Imagination Library already serves about 8,000 children in Lane County per month — more than half of the 14,000 children that live here, according to census data.
“There’s no income requirement,” said Julia McMorran, the inaugural executive director of the countywide program. “This is for every child in Lane County. The fact that it’s just arriving to their doorstep, it’s one less thing that they have to think about and have to go out to do.”
In 2024, the state of Oregon codified Imagination Library as a permanent state-backed initiative. Salem covers half of the cost of books sent to early readers in Oregon, while community-specific nonprofits, foundations and donors fund the other half.
Before all three local Imagination Library branches joined forces, the Eugene Public Library Foundation funded Eugene’s program, Springfield Young Readers funded Springfield’s, and United Way Lane County funded the rural-facing program, which primarily served the McKenzie River area and Lowell.
Families who moved from one of the areas to another had to be unenrolled and then re-enrolled into their new local program — and busy parents often forgot to do so, leaders said.
The local, often volunteer-run programs also didn’t have the bandwidth for much follow-up, leading to unintended delays or pauses in book deliveries to kids.
“The capacity wasn’t there for us to be able to have someone really focus on all the pieces that go into that,” said Alma Hesus, president and CEO of United Way Lane County. “There’s all the nuance that goes into the program, like going to the post office and picking up the books that maybe didn’t make it to the home that they were supposed to, or got returned.”
The local organizations began to brainstorm how to improve the structure more than a year ago. They decided to join forces, pooling funding and moving the program under a new administrative home at United Way Lane County. The program will serve 25 rural communities, from Cottage Grove to Junction City to Oakridge.
“It’s a really win-win situation,” said Eugene Public Library Foundation Executive Director Dana Fleming. “It’s one of those rare times when something can contract and also expand. It can contract in the ways where you don’t have duplication of efforts and duplication of asks for fundraising, but it expands the reach to the kids.”
They hired McMorran, the countywide program’s only employee, to connect directly with families.
“I am contacting personally every single one of those families to say, ‘Hey, I see that you still have 25 months left in this program. That’s 25 books that we want to send to you. So how can we get them to you?’” McMorran said.
The program relies on a constellation of volunteers from local organizations and nonprofits, who help arrange tabling events and book drop-offs at food pantries, pediatricians’ offices, shelters and other community hubs to ensure people without a permanent address can access books, she said.
“If we can do anything to get them the books, then we’re going to do that,” McMorran said.
Hesus said children who enter kindergarten unfamiliar with reading and books in general often fall behind their peers in school. Meeting the third-grade reading benchmark is a “clear indicator” of graduating high school on time, she said.
“My goal is every kid is very familiar with what a book is, and so we can break the generational cycles of literacy issues and challenges,” Hesus said.
Parton’s Dollywood Foundation provides the Imagination Library’s global “infrastructure”: managing the database that tracks recipient children; partnering with the U.S. Postal Service for bulk mailing rates; negotiating reduced book printing costs; and facilitating a panel of early literacy experts who curate monthly book selections, McMorran said.
Every book distributed through the program is available in a bilingual English and Spanish presentation, she said, adding that about 450 Lane County children are registered to receive the bilingual books. Imagination Library provides braille and audiobook options, too.
“I think Dolly would be really proud of us,” Fleming said. “I have no doubt that she would be really tickled that we (a) were working together and kindly because that was her ethos, and (b) doing as much as we could to increase the likelihood that kids would get books in their hands.”
