Reading the role of library directors

What do library directors do? Most spend lots of time working with their staffs and their boards of trustees. Library directors need to be motivators of people.

They are usually the chief visionaries and planners for the library as well as being the most visible public spokespersons. Library directors need to know how to manage a budget and have ideas about how to get more money.

For some academic library directors, fund raising can be more than one quarter of their jobs. At some level, library directors are politicians in the sense that the buck stops at the desk or door with the "Director" plaque on it. If you peruse ads for public library directors, the words, "people person" often appear. Unless it's a really, tiny one person library they do not select the books, check them out or get to read them first.

Dan Armstrong, the new director of the Cook Memorial Public Library in Libertyville, has been a librarian for a long time. During his stint in the U.S. Army he found himself hanging around the base library during most of his free time. After he was discharged he figured he might as well become a librarian and get paid for something he liked doing. He became a library director because the only job he could find was running a small town library in southern Indiana. Now with the directorships of four libraries under his belt and more than 30 years of experience, he's got an opportunity to show what he's learned.

Cook Memorial serves both Libertyville and Vernon Hills with a total population of over 60,000. The original library in Cook Park in downtown Libertyville has been too small for a long time. Several years ago, in an effort to serve the population of Vernon Hills, the library opened the Evergreen branch in the basement of the Vernon Hills Village Hall. Still Cook's per capita square footage is the lowest among public libraries in the North Suburban Library System area.

Through the years there has been an overall reduction of services for library patrons. Space for study and reading is limited and there are no group study areas. The library offers no meeting rooms for the public and programming space is virtually non existent. The library offers only limited computer and Internet access compared with other area public libraries. Even the collections of books and other items have been stunted.

Efforts have been made to build new facilities. There have been many studies and plans. Three times over the last 15 years, the public has been asked for funding and approval of a specific plan. While there is general agreement among all concerned that something had to be done, all three of the specific proposals were rejected.

Before coming to Cook Memorial about three months ago, Armstrong was the director of the Palatine Public Library, a job he held for 16 years. During that period he constructed a new main library, added a new branch, initiated bookmobile service and tripled the annual circulation of library materials. For the last six years the Palatine Public Library has been cited as one of the 10 best in the nation among those serving populations between 50,000 and 99,999.

Armstrong came to the job interview at Cook with an idea. Instead of trying to get the general public to approve a specific solution to the space problems, he proposed a modest remodel of the facility in Cook Park coupled with the construction of a modest facility in Vernon Hills on land donated by the Village of Vernon Hills. This would be accomplished with a manageable mortgage debt of 12 million dollars to be paid back over 20 years. Six million would be spent on the Cook Park facility and $6 million on the new Vernon Hills facility. Both facilities would be constructed with the latest technology in mind, technology that would save staff time and improve service to the public.

Armstrong says he's having the time of his life. "Coming to work everyday is just a thrill. I am really jazzed about the possibilities for library service in our district. These building should be up and operating in about a year or 18 months and then we will have more fun creating and implementing state of the art library service."

For more details on the plans for the library, you can listen to my podcast with Armstrong at www.sarahlong.org/podcast, or see my interview with him on our award-winning cable show, "What's New in Libraries?" Go to www.whatsnewinlibraries.org for broadcast information for your community.