When Heather McCammond-Watts talks about libraries her face lights up with enthusiasm. The new director of the Wilmette Public Library clearly loves her chosen field, and is eager to turn her energy toward maintaining all the library’s diverse roles.
“I love libraries,” she said. “I feel like we’re one of the last bastions of democracy. We’re a place of community for every person in the family, for all ages and generations.”
McCammond-Watts, 48, was announced last November as the successor to long time director Ellen Clark, who retired Dec. 31; McCammond-Watts’ first official day in the position was Jan. 1. She praised Clark and the library’s staff for easing her transition into the post.
“Ellen and the board have left me such a great foundation. I have an amazing staff, people who are very creative and very imaginative,” she said.
One of the reasons she wanted to come to Wilmette was because it already has a vibrant library tradition, in a community that values the library as a community center, she said: “People see it as a place of civic engagement, like a town square where people purposely come to have dialogue with their neighbors.”
McCammond-Watts, a Kansas native, isn’t the first person in her family to be a librarian: her grandmother was a school librarian as well as a teacher, she said. But she didn’t immediately follow that path herself, instead majoring in English literature. She moved to Chicago and went on teach and spend time in the editing field before realizing that she wanted to be a librarian.
“There was that ‘Aha!’ moment, when I realized I loved children’s literature and I wanted to be a children’s librarian,” she said.
McCammond-Watts earned her master’s degree in library science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She worked in the Chicago Public Library system before taking five years off to raise her family in Oak Park, then returned to the field in 2003 as manager of children’s services at the Oak Park Public Library. Along the way she gained a passion for general library advocacy, which led to her route toward directorship, she said. Her last post prior to Wilmette was as director of the Midlothian Public Library.
Kathleen O’Laughlin, president of the Wilmette library board, said that although the hunt for Clark’s successor drew high quality candidates from around the country, “through the whole process, Heather simply rose to the top.”
Her experience in Oak Park and Midlothian helped convince the board, O’Laughlin said: “We wanted our director to not just run a library, but to be part of the community, and that’s Heather.”
McCammond-Watts, who has watched as library science and community engagement became intertwined with technology and the growing role of the Internet, was an early advocate for making such technology available for young library patrons as well as adults.
And far from eliminating the need for library services, she said, the ubiquity of Internet information almost requires librarians.
“Librarians have shifted from telling people where they can find the information, to explaining how to handle the information, how to analyze it and put it in context, how to ask the right question,” she said.
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“When people come here, they’ve already Googled for information – everyone knows how to do that, now. What they are looking for is someone to help them figure out what they’ve found. Is it a reputable source? Is there something else out there that they need to find?
“Libraries have always been an information zone and a learning lab, it’s just that the format has changed,” she said.
Enriching libraries’ already diverse community role can take some interesting twists, she said. For instance, libraries are now lending and circulating far more than books or DVDs, she said.
“Some libraries circulate telescopes. And if you have a community that’s interested in bird watching, why not have some binoculars to circulate? Why not start bird-watching tours at the library?” she asked.
McCammond-Watts said she anticipates integrating Wilmette’s computer offerings throughout the entire library, going beyond simple computer lab availability. She would like to provide computer software such as music and film editing suites to artists who otherwise couldn’t afford access to such tools. She also foresees working with the business community, perhaps providing conferencing software or co-working spaces.
“But ultimately, it’s not my interests – it’s what the community is interested that will drive us,” she said.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy