FOLEY, Ala. — A little bird told Stephen Horn years ago that it’s okay to be different and try new things. Actually, that bird was Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the fabled bird in Richard Bach’s 1970 book whose lack of conformity led to Jonathan’s expulsion from the flock, but also to a new understanding of freedom and enlightenment.

“It was the first book I read that said to me it’s okay to think and live and act beyond the boundaries of society; to take a deep breath and step out and do and be somebody different from what everybody thinks you should do and be,” Horn said.

Bach’s book remains Horn’s favorite after all these years, but what Bach taught a generation of readers through the high-flying seagull continues to have validity for the former Disciples of Christ minister.

For one thing, Horn’s personal flight path has been somewhat different from the norm. The Alabama native graduated from the University of Alabama with a double major in comparative religion and speech communication. He went on to graduate from Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky and earn a doctorate from the Graduate Theological Foundation.

“After about 20 years in parish ministry it was time to move on,” Horn said.

And that brings him to his recent appointment as director of Foley Public Library, where he has worked for the past seven years — he started out as a librarian aide and “just progressed through the ranks” — and where he succeeds longtime library director Donna Soto, who recently retired.

Horn said the transition has been “painless,” yet, “It’s always difficult because, no matter what basic philosophical agreement you have with the previous administration, there’s always something a little different.

“I’m a little different from Donna. She had her focus and I have mine.”

That’s just an accepted fact to hear Horn tell it. It’s not an apology for not conforming or failing to follow preconceived notions.

Truth is, Horn said the biggest challenge facing Foley Public Library today is the current economic recession and the impact it’s had on the City of Foley. The Library has been without three full-time employee slots being filled for approximately four months, and that’s increased everybody’s workload, he said.

“This Library is the second busiest in the county, probably only a tiny margin behind Daphne,” Horn said, noting Foley lends to other libraries in the county more than any other library.

“When you see people who don’t have luxury money coming to the library, you know something is going on,” Horn said of the effects of recession.

Today, people who might have bought a new computer or had theirs fixed a year or two ago are coming in and using Foley Public Library’s computers, Horn said, that to the tune of 3,400 a month. Likewise, people are getting DVDs from FPL rather than going to Blockbuster. And FPL is “school” for home-schoolers, a group that is growing in number.

“There are a lot of folk for whom school accoutrements are too much,” Horn said in referring to the burgeoning number of home-schoolers using the Library’s resources.

According to Horn, Foley Public Library is nearing 50,000 volumes and has the totality of the county’s library resources available at no charge. Approximately half of FPL’s 50 or so computers are for patrons’ use.

“Folks forget there is an entire substrata of people who can’t afford a computer or for whom using a computer is such a daunting task,” Horn said. He notes FPL staff are on hand to help patrons do such things as fill out job applications online, something many local employers require.

Also, FPL’s computers are constantly being set from English google to Spanish google to aid the largest number of Spanish speaking patrons of any library in the county. Staff also stand ready to help a large contingent of Eastern Europeans in the South Baldwin area with computer assistance, Horn said

In a city of 13,000 people, FPL has 18,000 to 19,000 registered, library card-holding partrons, “a whole lot more than the population of Foley.”

But all the news at FPL isn’t about challenges and trying to keep up with increased demands on the Library. Horn cites one recent recognition of which the Library is especially proud.

Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings, a respected and prestigious method of rating public libraries by using more than a dozen different measures, recently placed FPL in the 98th percentile of its population group, second only to Flomaton, and the only two libraries in the state to be rated that high.

“The staff is everything in a library,” Horn said of the recognition, one which FPL has achieved before. But with the recent move of the Library into a new building and all that entailed, he said the Library staff was a little surprised to get the recognition again so soon.

“Generally, we know we’re good,” Horn said with a laugh.

Another recent high point for FPL was a gift of $3,000 from County Commissioner Skip Gruber’s contingency fund to be used for FPL’s Summer Reading Program, the largest in the county. Approximately 300 or so children participated every week in the Program this summer. Horn said the monies were used to provide books for the children and motivational props that help children see that the library is a fun and exciting place and not a place that makes the kinds of demands on them that school does.

Horn also had praise for Vision Bank for a $100 savings bond that was presented to the child that read the most books during the Summer Reading Program.

“We’re so grateful they stepped up to the plate,” Horn said of Vision Bank, noting the recession has been anything but kind to banks of late.

“I am thrilled to be here,” Horn said of his recent appointment. “I feel this Library has potential and promise yet to be realized.

“Library work today is the last bastion of the exercise of free speech and thought, and to me that’s everything.”

Horn is married and has three children and four grandchildren.