The Library Board President introduces the next Library Director

[remarks delivered by Liz Witek at the general staff meeting, Nov. 19, 2010]

Good Morning!

I realize that what I am about to “announce” is not exactly brand-new information and will not come as a surprise to you. However, both Terry Bergen -- who has been on the Board for many years and is our current Personnel Committee Chairperson -- and I felt strongly that even though we had hired an internal candidate, it was important to follow many of the same formalities in making this presentation as we would if we had brought in a new director from another city.

Following Terry Dawson’'s public announcement of his retirement late this summer, I met with Terry Bergen and we appointed a Search Committee to find a new Director. That committee consisted of:

• the Board'’s Personnel Committee
• Terry Bergen
• John Peterson
• Jean Detjen, as well as
• Jan Quinlan, the Executive Director of the Friends
• Peter Gilbert, who is on the FOAL Board and is the Director of the Lawrence University Library
• Rick Krumwiede, the Director of OWLS
• Don Hietpas, who serves on the Friends Board and on the Library Board
• I came along for the ride -- but was not a voting member -- and we also had the benefit of the expertise of
  
• Jay Ratchman from the City of Appleton HR office
  

We posted this position nationally, and received applications from every corner of the country and many states in between. Even though we have a very capable staff here, we truly did not know whether anyone from the APL would apply for the director’s post.

The Search Committee spent a great deal of time deciding what qualities and qualifications we were looking for in our next director. You might recall in mid-August receiving a request for input from Terry Bergen and me regarding your ideas for the new director. I would very briefly sum up that input like this:

"Please hire a director who understands the importance of each section of the library and will not be biased toward or against any section. – Oh, and hire someone who has Vision.”"

Committee members reviewed stacks of application packets and narrowed down many impressive candidates to only three finalists we felt had the potential vision and breadth of experience we were looking for.

In late October, the Search Committee interviewed the finalists. The Mayor and Sandy Neisen from HR had a chance to meet each candidate and APL section heads conducted tours with the two out-of-town finalists. Each of these groups provided feedback, and our new director was selected.

The twelfth director of the Appleton Public Library, assuming those duties after Terry'’s retirement in January, will be Colleen Rortvedt!

As you may know from working with Colleen, or have read in the recent Post-Crescent article, she graduated form Lawrence University and earned her Master’s in Library Science from UW-Milwaukee, while working here at the APL. Colleen has that wide range of library experience we all felt important, having worked in Young Adult and Audio-Visual, coordinating the development of the Hmong Collection, and planning the first community read here, all prior to becoming the Assistant Director nearly two years ago.

The search committee felt that Colleen had an appreciation for the many different types of people within the Appleton community and their needs, as well as an understanding of our role as the system’s resource library and a vision for advancing the APL into the future, considering the physical, technical, financial, and political challenges it will face.

We know that after Terry'’s retirement, this library will be in very good hands, but things will not be exactly the same, and it would be really weird for us to expect them to be, and so I would ask everyone to be open to the vision and new and different leadership that Colleen brings when takes the helm in the beginning of the year!

Here she is, your new Library Director, Colleen Rortvedt!