Library books at Brown County Central Library, Sep. 3, 2026. PC: Fox 11 Online
(WTAQ-WLUK) — The Nicolet and Outagamie Waupaca Library systems serve 32 libraries with over 50 locations across Northeast Wisconsin.
An exploration committee is digging into if it makes sense for the two systems to become one.
Discussions started back in 2023. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that a joint committee was formed to explore the idea further.
“First and foremost, we’d hope to improve the services to our system member libraries. We think a merged system would be able to provide more and better services,” said Outagamie Waupaca Library System Director, Bradley Shipps.
Would a merger save on costs?
“We think there will be down the road. We would definitely probably merge to one location. As I mentioned, we’d have some administrative costs that could be combined and hopefully scaled back,” said Nicolet Library System Director, Tracy Vreeke.
Vreeke added those dollars could then be used to help member libraries.
Shipps says the committee is exploring the possible impact of a merger on system governance, staffing, budget, and services to libraries.
“Library users probably wouldn’t experience much change because the services we provide are to the libraries themselves and they’re mostly behind the scenes,” said Shipps.
Sarah Sugden is the Executive Director of Brown County Library and serves as a member of the merger exploration committee.
“The work is still going to continue throughout the fall and into the winter. The process for final approval does require full votes from the participating county boards,” said Sugden. “We really want to make sure that it’s the right decision to make for everybody, right, not just for library systems or not just for, you know, one county, but all counties.”
The member libraries of each system are spread across 10 counties. They are:
- Brown
- Door
- Florence
- Kewaunee
- Marinette
- Menominee
- Oconto
- Shawano
- Outagamie
- Waupaca
Not only would the system boards have to agree to join together, but all 10 county boards would need to approve the merger too.
“There were two smaller systems down in the southern part of the state that did merge, I think maybe about three or four years ago now. There is also one system in the northwestern part of the state that is a ten-county system, which is what we would be if we merged. There definitely are models that we can look to for guidance and we are doing that,” said Vreeke.
Shipps added the hope is for the committee to have a recommendation by the end of this year or early 2027.
If a merger is the path forward, implementation could still take another year or more.
“A new system would be official on the first of the year. So that could be Jan. 1, 2028, or it could be Jan. 1, 2029. At this stage, we don’t have a set timeline,” said Shipps.
If you have any questions for the merger exploration committee, it asks you to send them to mergerexploration@owlsweb.org.
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