7 apply for library director; chairman disappointed

• By SCOTT DYER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 16, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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A national search for a new East Baton Rouge library director has drawn seven applicants, all of whom are from outside Louisiana.

But Library Board Chairman Dan Reed said he’s a bit disappointed in the size of the field. The last time that library officials launched a search for a director was in 2003 and 18 people applied.

Reed said he may ask the board at its monthly meeting Thursday to consider increasing the library director’s salary and then reopening the search to see if higher pay generates more interest. Former Library Director Lydia Acosta, who left in June to take a job in Florida, was making slightly more than $100,000 per year, Reed said.

Copies of the résumés of the seven applicants — and an eighth candidate who pulled out of the race — were released to Library Board members Thursday.

At this point, none of the seven applicants in contention has been screened to make sure they meet all qualifications, Reed said.

Ads, run in library trade journals across the nation, set the pay for the local library director’s job at between $72,388 and $100,202 per year. The ads also laid out minimum qualifications that included a master’s degree in library science or a master of library and information science. In addition, applicants were required to have at least five years of supervisory management and financial experience.

Those in the running for the library director’s job:

• n Emily Eddy, who has worked for four years as a library media specialist at the Alamo Navajo Community School in Magdelena, N.M. She previously served as director of the Washington County-Jonesborough Library in Jonesboro Tenn., and assistant department head of the Birmingham, Ala., Public Library.
• n David Farrar, who has worked as director of the Talladega, Ala., Public Library System since 2001.
• n Michael Golrick, who has been library director at L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, Eau Claire, Wis., for two years. Prior to that, Golrick served as city librarian for the Bridgeport, Conn., Public Library for six years.
• n Michael Lamb, whose résumé shows no current employment. Lamb worked as assistant director of the District Library in Jackson, Mich., from 2004 until December 2007, including a stint as interim director for six months in 2005. For 4‰ years prior to that, Lamb worked as director of the public library in DeWitt, Mich.
• n Gabriel Morley, who has worked as director of Pike-Amite-Walthall Library in McComb, Miss., for two years. Morley served as director of the Washington Parish Library in Franklinton, La., for two years prior to that. He also worked as assistant managing editor of The Daily News in Bogalusa from 1997 to 2003.
• n Ricky Prado, a Louisiana native who has worked as director of the DeWitt, Mich., Public Library since 2004. Prado also worked at library systems in Chambersburg, Pa., and Carlisle, Pa.
• n Bianca Roberts, who has served as manager of youth services for the St. Louis County Library System in Missouri from 2000 until 2007. For the past year, she’s worked as youth services district consultant of the Montgomery County Library District in Norristown, Pa.