A Journey to Excellence

In 2002 the Elmwood Park Public Library moved from its small location in the Elmwood Park circle at 4 Conti Parkway to its current location at 11 Conti Parkway. The new facility was built in cooperation with the Village of Elmwood Park and state agencies. See the EPPL HIstory section for more information.

Covid brought many challenges to libraries including loss of visitors as the state recommended closing to visitors for the safety of library staff. Library operations were limited to curbside check-outs. During this time of many employees ‘working from home’, even while other Village services were still coming into the office, EPPL board challenged the director to leverage this down-time to strategize over what the library should become to meet the changing needs of the community. which was demonstrating:

• Less book purchases (see infographic)- the core of library services

• More online preferences, such as Ancestry.com

• Explosion in gaming

• Preference for hands on programs, especially for families and kids

• Online streaming services for movies

• And more

Without adjustment, libraries would slowly go the way of newspapers and other print media.

EPPL board sought to revolutionize the role of the library to meet the anticipated future needs of the community.

Like many libraries, this proved to be too much of a challenge for resources/staff stuck in a tired old library model of services. Even after Covid, getting residents into the library remained a challenge.

Given this constant challenge at rebounding the library usage numbers, the EPPL board decided to seek a different direction to get EPPL to a better model for serving the community and solving for a now 20-year-old facility who’s maintenance was de-prioritized for other endeavors. This diverged from the direction the current director was steering and that divergence resulted in the director’s resignation.

The resignation provided the opportunity for the EPPL board to find the right resource to get the library to where the community needed the library to go and to center on shoring up the facility. It also provided an opportunity to re-align the skillset needed to run an entity with a $2 million budget and manage a staff of 20-30 employees.

The board had a choice to make to fill the vacancy.

Follow the current library model- hire a consultant for tens of thousands of dollars only to get the same tired list of director candidates from firms operating in the library world and have a bias toward certain candidates

OR

Buck this system, save up to 10K by gathering applications through the many sources like LinkedIn and Monster.com, pre-screen the resumes, and interview candidates themselves to ensure alignment to EPPL’s direction and transformation needs.

Given the EPPL board had the skillsets among the current trustees to do this, the board decided to take a brave step toward the latter. Moreover, the board sought to find a candidate that’s proficient at operations, budgeting and personnel, leaving the specialized librarian roles to department heads where their specialty can be leveraged more effectively.

This did not sit well with a library industry fraught with an echo chamber mentality (many librarians and teachers are on each other’s boards perpetuating this mentality), with many adjacent consultancies feeding off of that echo.

Many of the MLIS credentialled candidates the board received could not satisfy a basic behavioral interview format used by many private companies to vet a candidate for such a position.

This lack of skillsets among MLIS credentialled candidates is further demonstrated in an excellent article penned by Sonia Alcantara-Antione (then CEO of Baltimore Public Libraries). See the links section for this article

The board found their candidate from a seasoned professional with over 30 years experience in running large operations in the private sector and looking to do something more meaningful.

But in doing so, the EPPL board indeed ‘Kicked an Ant Hill’ in the library world. This is evidenced through a Book Riot posting one can find online, which includes the behavioral interview used.

With the new candidate, the EPPL board has started an evolution to what they call ‘Library as a Business’. In the boards view, this is how libraries should operate. Libraries are like businesses only their revenues come from the taxpayers versus traditional business revenue streams.

The community of taxpayers are the libraries customers, as such everything a library offers needs to provide value for the taxpayers expense. In meeting the needs of the customers, the library needs to meet the goal of advocating for libraries AND providing the most benefit for the most members of the community. The EPPL library does this by being ‘Fact Based and Data Driven’ a concept known by many corporations.

Unfortunately, many libraries have lost sight of ‘most benefit for the most users’ seeking to just provide for a small niche of the community.

It’s only been two years, but the results are astounding (see ‘By the Numbers’.) This is all thanks to having the right resource for the right role, a concept which the EPPL board and their director values.

Doing your job well and with good customer service appears to be the driving force of this success and is embraced by the director and the EPPL board. A similar viewpoint is held by the Village of Elmwood Park municipality, who fully supports their library.

This has not set well with a library complex that has its roots heavily in the colleges and universities that churn out librarians with certificates, but lacking the skills needed to perform at the top spot of a library.

There are many quality librarians out there that DO have these skills, but those are hard to find and developed their skills through their own drive and need to succeed. These hard to find skills are not surprising given the article by Sonia Alcantara-Antione in the links section.

In EPPL’s case this has caused individuals who are part of this library complex (two have roots in the library world, and one is part of the niche group they serve) to run for the board in an effort to oust the current director and take EPPL back to the days of serving a small niche of the community and advocate for causes, versus advocating for library services.

The current EPPL director is a threat to their complacency. So much so that they level accusations that the director was chosen because he is related to people in the village administration- he’s not and they have no proof of this other than an accusation they are trying to perpetuate.

This is ironic given the library world operates very much like the “Good Ol’ Boy's” club that they accuse others of operating in. This is not surprising given an accuser many times is the one doing what they accuse others of doing.