About Us
About the Library
The Council Bluffs Public Library enriches, informs and empowers our community.
For more than 140 years, the Council Bluffs Public Library has met the changing needs of Council Bluffs residents, families, and businesses. From books, news, and historical documents to internet access and modern technology, we are the primary community resource for all ages to access information, find inspiration, or simply gather and enjoy this space. Our programs, events, and collections continually evolve and expand to best serve our community — learn what’s new.
Click here to read the Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2021-22.

48,738
Registered Card Holders
1,733
Check-outs per Day
65,000
Sq. ft. of Building Space
40
Full & Part-time Staff

Antonia Krupicka-Smith
Library Director
As we head into the New Year, we have many programs to be excited about, but first I would like to share some of our accomplishments from the last couple months. In the fall of 2022 we were able to launch LIT: Student accounts with the Council Bluffs Community School District. These accounts will support academic success by providing every student, who opts in, access to the electronic offerings provided by the library including free virtual tutoring services, reviewed articles and resources, ebooks and eaudiobooks, and study prep and testing materials. We are excited about this new partnership and look forward to expanding into Lewis Central Community Schools during 2023.
We also completed our oral history workshops and building out our podcast and portable sound booth makerspace kits to provide more training and tools within the community to support storytelling and the sharing of oral history. The sharing of our stories is vital in capturing the history of our people and our place and these workshops and the supporting tools we purchased with the support from an Iowa Humanities grant and the Council Bluffs Public Library Foundation are wonderful resources to support our community doing just that.
Finally we welcomed back the Library Foundation Speaker Series with our first author, Geraldine Brooks. It was a wonderful evening of discussion around her recently published historical fiction book, Horse. I am excited in the New Year that we will be welcoming two more authors in this series, humorist nonfiction author Mary Roach on January 12th, and fiction author Elin Hilderbrand on February 16th. I encourage you to read their titles now and purchase tickets for the events at the Arts Center on the Iowa Western Community College campus.
We are also looking forward to some wonderful new offerings in our Makerspace programming to include basic sewing, embroidery machine projects, and basic soldering. Look for some new tool offerings as well including a heat press which will be great for creating designs for textiles such as t-shirts and bags.
I also encourage you to look for the announcement of our One Community Reads titles and author visits coming in March and April 2023. The titles will be announced in January. The theme this year is “The World is your Garden” and focuses on community gardens and ways to build community and fight food insecurity within our community.
I am excited about the upcoming line-up of authors and events for all ages and I hope you will visit the library often during the coming winter months.
Library Board of Trustees
The Council Bluffs Public Library is governed by the Board of Library Trustees and is comprised of 9 members who are appointed by the Mayor and are confirmed by City Council. Each member serves a six-year term. As defined in the Board By-laws, the primary duties of the Board include:
- Serves as a liaison between the library and the community
- Acts as a policy-making board
- Assists in budget preparation
- Control of expenditure of funds allocated to the library
- Responsible for the appointment of a librarian
Board meetings are held on the third Wednesday of the month at 4:30 pm at the Library.
Click here to download the PDF for this month’s Board Packet.
Past Reports
Library Board Members

Cindi Keithley
President

Matt Garst

Stacey Goodman

Abby Jares

Nicole Juranek
Secretary

Leo Martin

Alison Smith
Secretary

Jared Tripp
Vice-President
Careers at the Library
There are no openings at this time.
68
Hours Open per Week
6
Meeting Rooms for Public Use
186,970
Materials in Collection
100
Number of Public Computers
