Director ready to sprint

• By SCOTT DYER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 24, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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David Farrar left a job supervising 11 employees at the Talladega, Ala., library to oversee 466 workers as the East Baton Rouge Parish library system’s new executive director.

“It’s a big change for a country boy,” Farrar said. “But whether you have one employee or 500, at the end of the day, it’s about personnel issues, making sure you are aware of policies and procedures, and making sure you can implement those properly and legally,” he added.

Farrar, 41, who earned three  degrees from the University of Alabama, said he was looking for a new opportunity and the challenge of a fast-paced pubic library system.

East Baton Rouge Library Board Chairman Dan Reed said Farrar was clearly the best candidate who applied for the post. Farrar is “very fast on his feet” and will do well in his new $80,000-per year job, Reed said.

“I see him as a younger guy rising up in his career, so I don’t think it should surprise anyone that he’s moving up to a larger library system,” he said.

To start his new job, Farrar pulled into Baton Rouge on the weekend that his alma mater and its head football coach Nick Saban beat arch-rivals LSU,  27-21,  in Tiger Stadium.

Farrar said he happened to wear a bright red tie on his first day, and received grief about it from pro-LSU employees.

“And I’ve been backing my car into parking spaces so that people can’t see my (Alabama) license tag,” Farrar said.

Farrar began his college career studying political science, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in that field. “While I was getting my master’s in political science, I worked in the library and found that I really enjoyed it,” Farrar said.

A few years later, the self-described academician returned to Alabama to get a master’s in library science. At the time, he was working at Virginia College in Birmingham, where he led 23 people.

Two years later, in 2001, Farrar took a job as director of the Talladega Public Library in a town known mainly for its NASCAR racetrack.

Although not initially a stock car racing fan, Farrar said he couldn’t help but warm up to the sport after learning that the library was a major beneficiary of a 2-percent sales tax collected at the Talladega track.

The stock-car tax generated between $400,000 and $600,000 of the Talladega library’s $1 million budget each year, Farrar said.