Interviews for library director are Oct. 24

Five candidates for the position of library director are scheduled to be interviewed by the Carson City Library board of trustees Oct. 24, but the most experienced applicant might face the highest hurdle.

The library board of trustees intends to interview and analyze the applicants, who are Diane R. Duquette of Pine Mountain Club, Calif., Amy L. Geddes of Carlsbad, Calif., Sena M. Loyd of Carson City, Angela Thornton of Muskogee, Okla., and Mary Scott Wallace of Reno.

“We basically have five people that we’re interviewing,” said Sandy Foley, library board chairwoman. She expected four would be face-to-face and the fifth would be done remotely via Skype. The remote interview will be with Thornton, the applicant from Oklahoma.

Foley said her board intends not only to conduct the interviews, which should last about an hour each, but to make a decision after deliberations the same day. Melanie Bruketta, Carson City’s human resources director, said she has told board members they can make an offer to hire or widen the search and delay making an offer. Foley praised Bruketta for her help.

“She has done a wonderful job,” Foley said.

The interviews will be handled in the library portion of the Business Resource Innovation Center, which is on the main floor of the BRIC building at 108 E. Proctor St.

Duquette in her background information sought $48 hourly, or $101,000 annually. Her experience prior to Kern County included three years in Redding as library services director, from 1984-87, and library work in other locations before that.

Duquette may face questions about her separation last year from her job as director of the Kern County library system.

Her resignation was accompanied by an agreement to reimburse the county $8,954 after an investigation into expenses that, according to the Bakersfield Californian newspaper, included job interviews for other positions in California. Duquette has a master’s degree in library science from Simmons College in Boston and almost a quarter-century of experience as director of libraries in the Bakersfield area.

Geddes, with the San Diego County Library since 2007 and a librarian supervised by the principal librarian in that system, has a master’s degree in library and information sciences. She sought a $50,000 annual salary, noted she supervised others in her current role and cited experience in Nevada.

She was the library director at the Tonopah Public Library from early 2003 until summer 2006. She also was a Walmart assistant manager in Bentonville, Ark., for a decade before moving west.

Loyd, the only applicant from Carson City, has a master’s degree in library and information science from San Jose State University in California. Her undergraduate degree in 2007 was from the University of Nevada, Reno. Loyd left the preferred-salary part of her information blank. She has worked at Carson City’s library since September of last year.

She said she was Two Digital Learning Center manager and technology trainer librarian. From early 2010 until she joined Carson City’s library, she was NDOT’s library manager and research librarian.

Thornton, the Oklahoman, said her preferred salary is $75,000 annually. She earned her master’s degree in library and information sciences from Valdosta State University in Georgia. Since 2010, she has been a manager of library operations II under the director of library operations at the Metropolitan Library System in Oklahoma City.

Before that, she was a library manager in Jackson, Ga., for five years, and a branch manager for the Eastern Oklahoma District Library System for two years, beginning in 2004.

Wallace, the candidate from Reno, has a master’s degree in library science from Emporia State University in Kansas. She listed her preferred salary as $36 hourly, or $74,880 annually. She has spent the past decade as managing librarian at the downtown Reno library, supervised by the Washoe County Public Library’s public-service librarian. Before that, she had six years of library experience in Lafayette and Hammond, Ind.

Wallace said she lives in south Reno and envisions commuting initially, but moving later to Carson City.

City government has cited a library director’s salary range from almost $70,800 to more than $99,100 annually. Among required qualifications listed were a master’s degree in library and information science from an institution with American Library Association accreditation and five years of executive management experience in a public library environment, or an equivalent combination of education, training and experience.

Bruketta said 33 people applied and the board wanted to interview a half-dozen of them, but one withdrew.