New director begins at Rogers Memorial Library

Recommend

Comment

Email this article

Print this article

Get news alerts

RSS Feeds

Share Digg Mixx Linked In Facebook Twitter Delicious

The new director of the Rogers Memorial Library got her start on Monday, diving into her job just as Southampton Village enters its peak season.

Elizabeth Burns of Southold was chosen from a field of 21 candidates to replace Debra Engelhardt, who, after seven years in the position, resigned from the library six weeks ago to become the director of the Huntington Public Library.

“She has extensive experience as a library director, having been a director at two libraries, and she was highly regarded by other professionals in the library field,” James Kennedy, president of the Rogers Memorial Library Board of Trustees, said of the board’s reasoning in hiring Ms. Burns. He said she is in tune with current library trends and was the best fit among the candidates to meet the library’s needs.

Ms. Burns worked in libraries throughout her college career at Stony Brook University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in history. She went on to become the assistant to the director at the Southampton College library for five years and earned a master’s degree in library science from Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science. She became a librarian at the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Free Library and eventually took a job as the director of the Brookhaven Free Library.

“It was a great place to learn the ropes of being a library director,” Ms. Burns said of the Brookhaven Free Library, which she noted is fairly small.

After seven years in Brookhaven, she returned to Cutchogue and assumed the role of director there.

In February, under Ms. Burns’s leadership, Cutchogue was named a Library Journal 2009 Five-Star Library. It was one of only 11 libraries across New York State to earn the distinction, which is based on the number of patron visits, circulation, program attendance and public internet computer use.

The Rogers Memorial Library Board of Trustees chose Ms. Burns with the help of a search committee composed of current board members Mr. Kennedy, Vice President Rich Warren and Richard Petrow, as well as former members Mary Beatty and Bill Murphy and the library’s head of reference, Elizabeth Eastin.

Ms. Burns said she was intrigued when she saw that Rogers Memorial Library was looking for a new director because it is such a bigger library than she has run in the past. “It’s about three times the size as Cutchogue in every way—building size, budget, collections, staff,” she said.

Mr. Kennedy said the library is planning a “meet the director” event in the near future so community members can get to know Ms. Burns.