Photo by Kelli S. Hewett.
Lindsy Gardner, director of the O’Neal Library, is looking forward to what’s ahead with major renovations now in progress.
Lindsy Gardner reads the way other people breathe.
This year alone, she’s aiming for 35 to 40 books — some in print, some in audio, often starting one way and finishing the other — while coaxing hundreds of Mountain Brook kids to turn their own pages, too.
As director of the O’Neal Library since 2017, she believes a library should feel like both a playground and a refuge.
“We want people to feel welcome, whatever that means for them,” she said. “If they need a lot of help, we’re happy to give that. If people come here just to have quiet time, we hope we can give that experience, as well. We’re feeding their curiosity — helping them discover new books, new experiences, new people.”
Even this year, with a major interior renovation that began May 11 and a temporary move to City Hall, Gardner is determined the heart of the season won’t change.
“We’ll definitely make sure that there are incentives for the kids to read all summer,” she said. “We won’t have as many programs as we normally do, but we’re still going to have our weekly story times. Things will look a little different this year.”
Gardner is no stranger to hard work, adapting and thriving through challenges.
“Lindsy is an exceptional asset to the city of Mountain Brook,” said Mayor Graham Smith. ”She is a talented leader who has navigated our library through significant challenges, including the pandemic and the library flooding last year. Lindsy is full of cutting-edge ideas and possesses a genuine love for our community. She is widely recognized as one of the top library executives both in Alabama and across the country. We are lucky to have her.”
In 2024, Gardner was nominated by her peers and then awarded Mountain Brook’s employee of the year. In 2025, she was honored with the Distinguished Librarian Award and the Intellectual Freedom Award by the Alabama Library Association.
Gardner knows how a library can mark a childhood. She grew up in Linden, a small west Alabama town where her mother taught history and her grandmother read constantly.
Weekly trips to the library were simply part of life.
“I was highly encouraged to read by my extended family and have always loved to read,” Gardner said. “I really liked biographies when I was young. I loved any biography — anything about history.”
These days, she’ll start with audio while walking or getting ready in the morning, letting a narrator tackle tricky names and foreign places. Then, once she’s hooked, she changes gears.
“I’m very spoiled,” she said. “I like to listen to the first half of the book and then read the second half of the book. I get to a point in the book where I want to go faster and I can read much faster than I can listen. I try to get the print book and finish it out.”
For someone who spends her days surrounded by stacks, her own shelves are surprisingly lean.
“I subscribe to a philosophy that I encourage others, which is, buy the best and borrow the rest,” she said. “I have a small collection at home of my very favorites. I’m not a collector, necessarily.”
There are a few sentimental exceptions: thrillers by her friend, author Brad Parks, who dedicated one of his books to her, and historical romances from the ’80s and ’90s that take her straight back to her grandmother.
Photo by Kelli S. Hewett
Gardner, an avid traveler and lifelong learner, said she loves how patrons have embraced the O’Neal Library as a place of their own. Among the most popular items children can check out are Tonies, small figurines embedded with audio stories and songs.
“There is some comfort in those books,” she said.
Her curiosity doesn’t stop at the end of a chapter. In the past few years, Gardner has carried that same hunger for stories across the world to Morocco, Mongolia and beyond, often by herself.
“What I love about travel is it makes me feel like I’m part of this big, wonderful world where we’re all connected,” she said. “I get to that through connecting with the local people and learning about what it’s like to live in that country. I really love interacting with local people. Sometimes I’ve done cooking classes, hikes, visits to homes.”
She has even gone skydiving a few times.
Those home visits abroad aren’t that different from what she chases at home: the feeling of being woven into a larger community.
In Mountain Brook, she sees it in the way people use the building she leads — young professionals and graduate students camped out with laptops and coffee, families cycling through the children’s department, kids who have to be coaxed out the door.
Photo by Kelli S. Hewett
Gardner, an avid traveler and lifelong learner, said she loves how patrons have embraced the O’Neal Library as a place of their own. Among the most popular items children can check out are Tonies, small figurines embedded with audio stories and songs.
Young patrons are obsessed with a newer, screen-free offering: Tonies, small figurines embedded with audio stories and songs that kids can check out along with a special speaker.
“It has been wildly successful,” Gardner said. “We’ve heard from lots of parents that that is the carrot they use to get kids to leave. We have less crying kids because they have to be bribed to leave.”
For all the technology and travel, Gardner’s belief about libraries is simple.
“Because librarians and library staff try to be so responsive to community needs, we’ll always be relevant,” Gardner said. “People are looking for help with things. They’re looking for ways to learn. They’re looking for community. And libraries provide that.”
