William McCall Vickery 1957 Professor of Art and American Studies Carol Clark, who is the chair of the search committee, said the process began with the committee compiling input from the school community to revise the job description of the head librarian position.
“We had meetings with the faculty at large, with the library staff, with students [and] with the administration, about what qualities they were looking for in a librarian,” Clark said. After this process, the responsibilities of the Librarian of the College were defined as: “[to] promote the centrality of the library’s role in providing essential support for instruction, learning and research” and, in light of plans for a new library, to “anticipate the scholarly needs of its 21st century users, while also providing state-of-the-art access for the College’s existing collections,” according to the College’s human resources Web site.
Clark describes the job of head librarian as “a key position at the College,” particularly now because “libraries are in transition,” she said. “The world of digital resources is exciting and here, … [and] we are also a library very strong in archives and special collections and an open-stack book collection.”
Library circulation specialist Bilal Muhammad, who represents the library support staff on the committee, adds that the staff is looking for a candidate who is “personable, a good leader and a good manager of people.”
“You need a candidate who’s going to be nimble at dealing with competing needs [of students, faculty, administration, etc.],” Muhammad said. “[In addition], we need someone who can start relatively soon. It’s asking a lot, so it’s a difficult process.”
With these qualities in mind, the College “advertised widely in journals and Web sites to attract new candidates to the position,” Clark said.
Meanwhile, the College hired search consultant Chuck O’Boyle, who “reached out” to the community of librarians at institutions like Amherst, Clark said.
By May of last school year, the committee had garnered an initial pool of 55 applicants and continued to recruit over the summer, though the official selection process went on hiatus.
“The hiatus over the summer kind of slowed us down, but I think we jumped back into it full force,” Muhammad said.
When the new school year began, the committee evaluated applications and chose 11 candidates to undergo hour-long one-on-one interviews with committee members.
From those 11 applicants, three were selected to participate separately in “an intense two days” of “lunches with faculty and students, a public presentation, many meetings on campus with the librarians [and] dinners with the committee,” Clark said.
One applicant, Susan Allen, chief librarian of the Research Library and associate director of the Getty Research Institute, already went through this process on Sept. 29-30, while the remaining two candidates for the position will do so on Oct. 13-14 and Oct. 20-21.
“I hope that there will be an offer made sometime in November,” Clark said, “and that we will have a new librarian sometime after the first of the year.”
In the meantime, the college will continue to employ Librarian of the College, Emeritus Will Bridegam as the interim head librarian.
Muhammad is optimistic about the final stages of the eight-month selection process. “I think we have a pretty good pool of candidates,” he commented. “It’s been a long haul from February until now, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully one of the three candidates works out and we find someone who makes everyone happy.”