The Oak Park Public Library board has found its next executive director in Elsworth Carman, who is currently the director of the Iowa City Public Library. The announcement of his hiring came March 27, just days before a highly contested local election which will determine who serves on the board he works for. Carman will begin his new position May 27.
But Carman isn’t completely new to Oak Park or the Oak Park Public Library. He served as manager of the three-branch library’s adult and teen services department and then as part of its experiences and initiatives team. Carman worked in Oak Park from 2011 to 2016.
His hiring comes after about a year-long search for a replacement following the divisive firing of Joslyn Bowling Dixon after less than two years in the position. The library board enlisted the help of professional search firm, Koya Partners, to conduct a national search. According to a statement from the board, the search committee was led by library trustees Madhurima Chakraborty, Susanne Fairfax, Theodore Foss, and also Leigh Tarullo, the library’s interim co-executive director.
Matt Fruth, a longtime library board member, the current board president and a candidate for reelection in the April 1 election, acknowledged some might find the timing of the appointment awkward.
He said the library’s hiring committee did not want to move too quickly.
“We could have rushed and could have had someone in place by fall (2024),” Fruth said. “But the committee worked with Koya Partners to make the process as thorough as possible.”
Fruth said he understands there may be criticism about the timing and that perhaps the hiring could have been put off a little longer to get input from any newly elected board members. But, he said, the committee built a process with the search firm and collected input from the community and staff. The process was transparent, and if any of the board candidates were unhappy, they didn’t say so publicly.
Fruth said if the board had waited until after the new board is seated in May, it’s likely a new director wouldn’t have been hired until July and that could have meant losing out on potential candidates.
“That wasn’t a hypothetical situation. We lost out on a candidate between the second and third rounds of interviews. It happened and the board lost a good candidate who took another position,” he said.
The “staff and community deserve the stability of a permanent director,” Fruth said. “The board as it is comprised didn’t want to drag out the process for another couple of months.”
Carman comes to the position in an interesting moment in terms of the board’s makeup and governance. Four positions on the seven-member board are up for election in the April 1 vote. (You can find up-to-date election results at OakPark.com.)
There are eight candidates vying for those open spots. Two candidates are incumbents Matt Fruth, the current and long-time board president, and Maya Ganguly. The other six candidates are split between two slates. On one side are candidates Bruce Brigell, Megan Butman, and Daniel Suber. This slate was organized in part over its members upset over Bowling Dixon’s firing. They were public in their opposition to the firing and expressed their anger at public meetings.
The other slate is comprised of Annie Wilkinson, Colin Bird-Martinez, and Mika Yamamoto. This slate supported Bowling Dixon’s firing.
So Carman’s new position may call upon his powers of building consensus, depending on the election results.
Carman said the position is exciting for several reasons. “Oak Park Public Library is an incredible organization with a history of dynamic, community-facing work and a mission and values that align strongly with my own professional and personal beliefs,” he said. In the time he worked in the Oak Park library system, he said those years were “formative” to his development as a leader. And after serving as director of two libraries in Iowa, he is eager to return.
Carman says he is all too aware of a growing call for certain books to be banned. He says he supports intellectual freedom and that public libraries are responsible for providing diverse and wide-ranging collections of material, in a variety of formats. He said he celebrates the ways community input influences what the library adds to its collections. Continuing to solicit the community’s input for how it adds to its collection ensures such a collection is reflective of the community the library serves. He said the library’s Collection Strategy Statement is strong (https://www.oppl.org/about/policies/collection-strategy-statement/).
All eight candidates for the board in Tuesday’s election said they are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. They all said the new director should consult with the board and decide whether to have a DEI director on staff. Carman says the library system’s commitment to DEI is one of the reasons he was drawn to the position. He is acutely aware that DEI initiatives are being done away with at the federal level.
“I look forward to learning more about how the current staffing structure supports DEI efforts and how a DEI director position could amplify that work in ways that benefit the community,” he said. “I see assessing this vacancy as a priority and anticipate working closely with the board and staff to explore options once I’m onsite.”
He also said the current national political landscape demonstrates the need for DEI initiatives. Having effective staffing models that help DEI and anti-racism work is “critical to long-term success.”
Carman knows he is walking into a potentially awkward situation with the board.
Carman said regardless of who is elected to the board, he sees differing opinions positively. And the key to facing the challenge of different opinions is to focus on the work of the library.
“When a board is committed to figuring out how to best serve its community, agrees on core organizational values, and understands how library governance functions, there is a lot of room for active dialog, productive opinion sharing, and even disagreement,” he said. “Passion for the organization is a powerful anchor in bringing people together. As a library director, I see my role as supporting trustees by ensuring they have the resources needed to make informed decisions, actively providing feedback reflective of staff and community input, and working alongside them to identify effective ways to meet the evolving needs of both the community and staff.”
Fruth commended interim directors Leigh Tarullo and Suzy Antell for the work they have done over the past year during the search for a new director. Carman will start in his new role May 27.