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Library board hires new director
YOUNGSTOWN
Heidi M. Daniel of Sugar Land, Texas, will direct the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.
She will succeed Carlton A. Sears, who is retiring after 15 years as director of the 16-branch system.
Library trustees voted unanimously Monday to hire Daniel to start work next month at a $110,000 annual salary, with a relocation allowance of up to $5,000. Sears, who will retire July 31, earns $109,430 annually.
Daniel, who was one of five finalist applicants for the directorship here, is now neighborhood library team leader and district supervisor at the Houston Public Library. In her current post, she oversees 16 neighborhood libraries.
“The library is well-funded at the moment. The issue is what the library can do to help the communities” in Mahoning County, Daniel said in a telephone interview an hour after she was appointed.
“We need to offer innovative ways to offer services without more revenue,” Daniel said. The library system needs to explore the use of technology to provide better, faster and more efficient service to patrons “while still providing a quality workplace for our employees,” Daniel said.
Daniel said her first goal is to get to know the Mahoning County library system and the communities it serves.
“Once I know our strengths, I’d like to see how we can move forward and raise the bar of what we can do for our community,” Daniel said. She added that she wants to discover what services the county needs that the library isn’t already providing and then work toward providing those services.
“She offered us the most experience. She seemed to have the most knowledge,” and seemed to fit extremely well into the directorship here, said Dr. David Ritchie, of Austintown, a retired podiatrist and trustee and search committee chairman.
“She had the background. She handled the questions very well,” in interviews, and was the unanimous choice of the search committee, he added.
The library board met for 12 minutes at the Newport branch Monday afternoon, including a four-minute executive session just before it voted to hire Daniel.
However, Sears said the board did not act hastily. He noted that search consultants did thorough background checks on the applicants, and the search committee interviewed about 12 of the 31 applicants via Skype before the five finalists appeared here for meetings with library staff, a public forum and follow-up interviews.
The trustees offered Daniel the job May 31, contingent on conclusion of negotiation of employment contract terms and on her acceptance of the job, Dr. Ritchie said.
Daniel will be an at-will employee serving at the pleasure of library trustees; and she does not have a specified employment contract period, Sears said.
“One of the things that impressed me about her is she seems to have the sense that it’s important to listen” to others and not assume that she, alone, has found solutions to all challenges facing the library system, Sears said.
“There’s a comfort in her demeanor in the way she handled questions that just made me feel comfortable that this is a good person to hand the stewardship of the institution over to,” he concluded.