What Makes a Librarian
There are 3 core missions of a librarian’s commitment to public service:
- promoting reading
- access to information
- anchoring communities
When Eileen Sullivan became the Director of the Silver City Public Library in 2010, she understood that libraries were changing dramatically. Libraries have become a place where people come together to learn, share, and celebrate where they live, who they are and what they want to become.
Eileen’s vision was to have the library take on a “go-to” role for programming and events. Her primary focus was to identify the community’s needs and to develop programs around these needs.
As a result, the Silver City Public Library helps patrons not only find their next reading selection, but also answers questions about computer and internet training, job applications and resume writing, and helps patrons find government forms, including tax and health insurance paperwork, all of it for free.
When thinking about creative projects for the community, she asked, “Who are the collaborators who will bring something into the library that is mutually beneficial and how can we work together to meet community needs?”
Coincidentally, the Silver City Arts and Cultural District created a round table of like-minded people. Some of the events that arose from these meetings are the Clay Festival, the Clay Play at the Library for young people, and ultimately the clay mosaics that surround the Library. Eileen was secretary for this Board and helped with the grant writing. SYZYGY Tile provided materials and did the firing, gratis.
Eileen asked the Library Board and staff what words would most represent the library’s mission. After multiple meetings, a community survey, much brain storming, and Eileen’s research into how other libraries present themselves, Eileen synthesized these ideas into the library tag line “Where Stories Begin”. The mosaic, displayed to the left of the library’s front door, was completed in the summer of 2018.
This year in 2018, there were 15 adults and 31 youths who participated in the Clay Play Program
Another collaborative event that Eileen worked on was with the Santa Fe Opera. As part of the Summer Reading Program, children and adults had the opportunity to experience their expressive selves through drama. Our Friends of the Library provided some of the funding.
Eileen spearheaded a grant for Digital Literacy Training that was funded by the Freeport McMoRan Community Investment Fund. As a collaborative effort, Ken Dayer identified technology needs and developed the technology budget, and Lillian Galloway developed community partnerships and coordinated the programming and scheduling. Classes were offered in Introductions to Internet, Email, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, and social media. Along with the Library, this partnership originally involved 6 other community agencies (see silvercitypubliclibrary.org)
Eileen was also the initial Library liaison for the Southwest Festival of the Written Word. It began with an informal group of people meeting at the Library. In its first year, the Friends of the Library provided funding to pay for authors programs at the Library and partnered with the festival to assist in website development. Lillian Galloway provided website expertise and as the Library’s Outreach and Programming Librarian went on to play an active role on the festival planning committee.
Continuing with the guiding principle of community partnership Eileen agreed to have the Library house the Grant County Seed Library where gardeners can pick up and leave locally harvested seeds. The Seed Library is a project sponsored by the Volunteer Center, High Desert Organic Gardeners, and the Silver City Food Co-op.
Eileen believes that the high point of what the library staff accomplished – in its endeavor to have the library be a place to build and sustain community – is in the following:
She was shopping down town when a little girl turned to her mother and exclaimed, “Look, it’s the Library Lady!” The girl pulled out her library card from a pink patent leather purse and proudly announced that she carried it everywhere
Eileen recognized what it meant for the girl to be at the beginning of her own story; a journey of exploration and discovery through reading. She remembers her own excitement as a child when a whole world opened up to her through the use of a library.
“I have found the most valuable thing in my wallet is my library card.” Laura Bush
Throughout her life Eileen has had the experience of music bringing people together. She introduced the concert series to the Library because music in small venues builds community through the interaction of the audience with the musicians and with each other.
Fiddling Friends at the Library
Randall Bays Irish Traditional Fiddler
Eileen began playing the violin at age eight. Her brother had started piano lessons before her and Eileen wanted to play too, but her mother said not for another year unless she’d like to start with the violin. And that was all it took. Eileen has been a life-time violinist, first playing in a youth orchestra and later in numerous ensembles where the people she met have become her dearest friends.
As an undergraduate, Eileen studied the violin. When it came to decide on further education and career choice, she chose an MLS degree from the University of Texas at Austin because it is a versatile degree and offered many different directions for her future. She was influenced by her mother, also a librarian
Eileen came to the Silver City Public Library by way of the University of New Mexico where she was a medical librarian and then the Telehealth Services Manager at the UNM Center for Telehealth for six years.
Music has always played a role in Eileen’s relationship to our community. A traditional Irish fiddler, she gave a performance at the Silver City Museum, played her violin at the Yankee Creek Coffee House on Sunday mornings, and in Bayard as a fund raiser for food for children in Mexico.
Eileen left Silver City in 2017 to become the Director of the Los Alamos County Library System, with the main library in Los Alamos and the branch library in White Rock. There she manages the staff, the budget, and continues with the mission of how best to meet the needs of the community. She is currently enrolled in a 9 month program called Leadership Los Alamos.
She sees herself as having a long and continuing career in music; teaching fiddle to individuals and in workshops, and giving more performances. She was greatly influenced by her violin teacher who continued to teach until he was 81 years old.
For the past several years, she has taught at the Cascadia Irish Music week held at Evergreen College in Olympia, WA. She’s part of a traditional Irish music duo called “Far From Home” and has played at the Albuquerque Folk Festival among other venues.
There will be a time when she’ll travel and look into Irish music archives in Dublin and hopes to study ethnomusicology in Limerick, Ireland.
“I’m of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.” Barbara Kingsolver