The Niles Public Library board approved the final job description for director, bringing it one step closer to hiring a replacement for retired director Linda Weiss.
The Niles library has been without a longl-term director since the beginning of July 2014. In Sept. 17, 2014, the board hired the Charlotte, N.C.-based Coleman Lew Associates to help it find a director.
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During the Dec. 17 meeting, the board talked to Kenneth D. Carrick Jr., president of Coleman Lew, about the job description for a new director. The description will be used to attract candidates and help screen candidates who don’t quality. Carrick said he won’t send the job description out to job sites until January, because posting it in December isn’t likely to get much attention.
Search firms look at candidates and narrow the pool to a few individuals, with the board making the final choice. As Niles library interim director Susan Lempke previously said, library boards tend to favor this approach because otherwise the amount of work involved would be overwhelming.
In the run-up to the December meeting, Coleman Lew prepared the preliminary job description. The description listed the Niles library’s history and the summary of duties and qualifications. During the meeting, Carrick asked the board whether to include the requirement that the candidate have a master of library sciences degree.
When the board was interviewing potential director search firms, Carrick told trustees that he didn’t believe that library directors necessarily need to have an MLS. During the Dec. 17 meeting, he said that there were only two universities in Illinois that offered the degree – Dominican University and University of Chicago.
There are only 58 accredited MLS programs in the U.S., he said. This, Carrick said, could limit the pool of candidates. However, he said he remained neutral on whether limiting the pool would be desirable, telling the board that Coleman Lew would follow whatever parameters it set.
Lempke noted that the library has about 20-25 employees with MLS degrees, though only 15 of them are full-time.
Trustee Karen Dimond argued in favor of adding the MLS requirement.
“I think the degree brings a certain amount of respect from the community and their peers,” she said.
Trustee Chris Ball suggesting saying that the library “preferred” MLS candidates, but that the degree isn’t required. That way, they would attract candidates with MLS degrees without closing off the search to good candidates that don’t have such a degree, Ball said.
Trustee Carolyn Drblik felt that using “preferred” would still be limiting.
“We want the largest pool possible,” she said.
Board President Morgan Dubiel noted that Weiss doesn’t hold such a degree. He said that she was originally reluctant to apply because she felt she wasn’t qualified. Dubiel said he doesn’t want to scare off candidates who are as good as Weiss.
“I don’t want to miss a very highly qualified candidate outside that limited circle,” said Dubiel.
Dimond said that while she would still prefer to require the MLS, she would settle for “strongly preferred.”
In the end, the majority of the board voted to adopt the “preferred but not required” verbiage, with Dimond and Trustees Barbara Naganishi and Linda Ryan voting against the measure.
In addition to indicating a preference for an MLS degree, the final version of the job description indicates that the board prefers candidates who have “experience working directly with a Library Board of Trustees/Directors.” It mentions that the board prefers candidates who have “successful” administrative library job experience, working with library boards and library directors.
It indicates that the board prefers candidates that can show “significant, progressively responsible library service” experience. There are some requirements that aren’t framed as a preferences. They include experience with personnel management, planning and public relations, good communication skills, as well as “good financial understanding and business acumen.”
Carrick said that he will wait to send the description after Jan. 1.
“If we send it out now, it would just sit in people’s inboxes,” he said.