By Bob Seidenberg
Evanston Public Library trustees began taking steps Wednesday towards a process aimed at hiring the Library’s next executive director — the move coming approximately two and a half years after they thought they had that key need filled.
At their regular meeting, EPL trustees approved a recommendation from Board President Tracy Fulce to establish an ad hoc Board committee, managing the interim period as the Library searches for a new Executive Director.
Yolande Wilburne, the Library’s previous Executive Director, had resigned from the post, effective in February of this year.
Wilburne, the first African-American director in the Library’s 150-year history, had been hired for the position after an extensive 15-month search in October 2023.
Fulce had proposed the interim process would be managed internally via a Board committee “formalizing the terms of the interim leadership for the next 12 months.
The committee’s other role will be drafting the Request for Proposal to identify a professional search firm for the permanent Executive Director position.
Trustee Catie Huggins, whose background is research and who had participated in some of the arduous search that led to Wilburn’s appointment, has been tapped to take the first steps, bringing back an actionable plan to the Board at their regular May board meeting.
In a memo to the Board leading into the meeting, Fulce had recommended that with current interim executive director Heather Norborg willing to continue serving in that role for up to a year, trustees should scrap a previous backed proposal to bring in a firm to conduct a nationwide search to hire an interim director until a permanent director is named.
Instead the library should establish an advocate committee to work with Norborg during that period, she proposed.
The arrangement would allow the Library to better manage its resources in the hiring of a permanent Executive Director, she said.
Time and leadership the challenge: Fulce
Currently, the Library is faced with “two sort of gaps…time and leadership,” she told trustees at Wednesday’s meeting.
While Norborg has served as interim director before — most notably during the search for which ended with Wilburn’s appointment in — “she is the (Library’s) Assistant Director for a reason, she likes to do programming, public facing work,” she said.
She said looking at library issues such as in Tennessee where a librarian was firing for refusing to move LGBT books from the children’s to the adult section — “what we don’t want is to put someone who is a skilled librarian into a role that they don’t want, like that is now it should work.”
Given what executive directors are up against— issues such as the intergovernmental agreement and lease that Wilburn pushed for, as well as collective bargaining agreement, “these are not little things, these are big, big things,” Fulce said. “So we want make sure that the position is appropriately resourced.”
Other trustee, many with day jobs, who, unlike city council members receive no compensation for their service, broadly supported the direction, but sought additional details when it is returned to the full board.
Trustee Michelle Mills, the Board’s Finance Committee chair, suggested that perhaps the plan that comes before the Board next month, could even have “something as specific as the potential for goals like what is needed to do this.”
Catie Huggins, the Board’s Secretary, assigned to do legwork on the proposal, noted that her tenure on the Board, is scheduled to close in a few months.
Huggins, who works in the special collections and archives department at Northwestern’s. Evanston campus, suggested, hopefully that “someone could be in the wings to perhaps pick that up.”
“I have little self control when it comes to research,” she warnedtrustees. “ So I’m willing to do some of this work, as long as everyone is aware of the fact I won’t be here past the May board meeting.”
Fulce noted that the search for a permanent director will not necessarily stretch out as it did during the 15-month nationwide search the Library conducted to find a successor to Karen Danczak Lyons, after Lyons stepped down as Executive Library Director in June 2022.
“ I mean, we wrote an RFP, let’s not forget, like two years ago.”
And trustees did much the same on an RFP, looking for a search firm on an interim director.
Put the two together, “and you’ll have something,” she said.
