Search underway for new library director

The Calvin Coolidge Library has been running without a director since late September of last year.

Michelle Perry, the library’s cataloger, said previous director, Jami Yazdani, left late last year after her husband got a job down South that they decided they couldn’t pass up. Her job at Castleton was to oversee day-to-day work, control the budget and sometimes teach classes.

But library officials say work is still getting done.

“She kind of divided up the tasks that we can cover for her while we were looking for a new director,” Perry said of the former director.

But the jobs divided among the library staff aren’t their biggest problem with not having a director. Some say a bigger issue is not having anyone to go to for questions.

Stephanie Traverse, in charge of acquisition services, said it would help the flow if they had someone with a “full background” to look to when they needed an answer for something.

This is not to say that Castleton isn’t looking for a director. A search committee is currently looking through candidate applications.

This committee is made up of staff members and even a couple of students. It must comb through applications and try to work out which candidates to do phone interviews with and then which ones to schedule a visit to come see the campus.

That’s where there can be some complications, officials said.

“The last candidate we brought, we had to reschedule because of the weather, so it ended

up being about two weeks later,” said Billy Langlois, the library’s acquisitions coordinator and

member of the search committee.

The candidate visited last week on Monday and met with the president, library staff and some students.

The committee has found about five or six applicants that they like, but Langois said it is an “ongoing process.”

She also added that there were about 30 total applicants from all over the country, so weeding through them was tough. Committee members said they hope that they can figure out who they want for the job by summer and have a new director in place for the start of the school year.

Despite not having a director, library workers say they are doing a good job running the library.

“Luckily for us, our staff have been doing this job for a while,” said Charlotte Gerstein, the reference librarian said with a smile. “So there is a lot we can continue doing on our own. We are functioning pretty well. I’m really proud of everybody and how we stepped up.”

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