Library Director

Philip A. Place, director of the Harford County Public Library for more than five years, has resigned to become director of the Warioto Regional Library Center in Clarksville, Tenn.Mr. Place, whose resignation is effective July 29, said he's looking forward to "a less stressful job" in a "lovely area of the country.""The kids are raised, and we're going to do things differently," he said.Mr. Place said the location will put him much closer to Louisville, Ky., where his wife, Diana, plans to enroll at Southern Baptist Seminary.

Bit of a kerfuffle in the book division of the Land of Pleasant Living over the decision by the Harford County Public Library not to stock the popular novel Fifty Shades of Grey . Today The Sun publishes a letter by Mary Hastler, the library director, defending her decision, and it looks disingenuous. No librarian wishes to be accused of censorship, and Ms. Hastler takes umbrage at the accusation. She merely "decision to not purchase 'Fifty Shades of Grey' ... after careful review and research following our materials selection process.

The Harford County Board of Library Trustees has chosen Irene Padilla as the county's new library director.The trustees unanimously selected Ms. Padilla at its meeting Thursday. The 41-year-old Joppatowne resident replaces Philip A. Place, who resigned.Her appointment is effective immediately.Ms. Padilla is Harford's fourth director in its 48-year history. She has been deputy director of the county system since 1990. She was acting director for six months last year and again after Mr. Place left.

Mary Hastler knew she was about to create a fuss, knew that, unfair as she might find it, people were going to label her the last thing a librarian wants to be called — censor. You don't refuse to carry the most talked-about series of books in the country without anyone noticing. But as she read E.L. James' erotic novel, "Fifty Shades of Grey," on her iPad, Hastler couldn't reconcile its words with the Harford County Public Library's policy not to buy pornography. Hastler, the county's library director, says she has no problem with your run-of-the-mill bodice-ripper.

The Howard County Library director -- who oversaw a dramatic expansion of the system in the past four years -- is retiring this summer, he told county officials this week in a surprise announcement.Marvin Thomas sent a letter to members of the library's board of trustees, the Howard County Council and County Executive Charles I. Ecker confirming that he would retire at the end of June.Assistant Director Norma Hill will succeed Mr. Thomas.Both Mr. Thomas and Ms. Hill were unavailable for comment yesterday.

Enoch Pratt Free Library Director Carla D. Hayden is one of two finalists for the presidency of the American Library Association, the country's oldest and largest library organization, which is based in Chicago, her hometown. Hayden was asked by the ALA to run for the 2003-2004 presidency, which comes with a budget of between $50,000 and $100,000. While she would not receive a salary or need to step down from her post in Baltimore (which pays about $104,200 a year), the position demands some travel.

The Carroll County Public Library's bookmobile has been out of service since mid-December and is being repaired again, and the library director would like to see money in the county budget to buy a new one in the next few years. Otherwise, said Linda Mielke, the director, ""I'm going to get beat out by a snowplow." "I'm trying to find a way to get a new" bookmobile, said Mielke, who pitched the idea to the county commissioners in the fall but said she didn't get a definite response. "We've put a lot of money into it in the past few years in maintenance and repairs.

The day after Enoch Pratt Free Library Director Carla D. Hayden announced the five branch libraries that will close for good in September, she sat in the Poe Room of the central library downtown defending her decision to shut them down and saying she has been misunderstood. Hayden said that since she revealed in March that branches would close because of fiscal restraints, she has taken verbal lashings from community leaders and elected officials who say she has not tried to keep them open and that she planned all along to shut old, small neighborhood branches and replace them with a few new high-tech regional libraries.

Charles W. Robinson always has been outspoken and unconventional as Baltimore County's library director for 32 years, so why should his retirement be any different?For one thing, he made sure to give adequate notice when he notified the library board of trustees: 15 to 18 months.For another, he's more than willing to joke about it.Mr. Robinson, 66, who oversaw explosive growth and led the system into the computer age, said that when retirement finally comes the first thing he wants to do is to buy a pickup truck and spend a month driving back and forth between his house and the nearest home improvement store.

Norma L. Hill, Howard County's second library director in 60 years, is retiring June 30. Hill, who turns 70 next week, said she has "loved every minute" of her 20-year career - most of it spent as deputy director under Marvin Thomas and the last four years as director. "I think it's time to travel, have fun. I've got a first grandchild," she said. "It's just time to have the freedom to do what you want to do." Before coming to Howard County, Hill lived in Europe and Asia with her husband, a retired Air Force officer.

Restoring Sunday hours at three branches of the Harford County Public Library is a good thing. The three branches that are most likely to be reopening are Abingdon, Bel Air and one in the Route 40 corridor, according to Mary Hastler, the library director, in comments she made at last Thursday's meeting of the library board. Opening those branches makes the most sense. Abingdon and Bel Air are busy and serve the county's population center and one in the Route 40 corridor would be more convenient for those in the eastern part of Harford County.

A Letter from Mary Hastler, Director, Harford County Public Library: Recently Penguin Group publishing stopped offering new eBooks and digital audiobooks to public libraries and ended its relationship with the digital library distributor, Overdrive. From the website paidcontent.org "With this move, Random House becomes the only big-six publisher to allow unrestricted access to its eBooks in libraries-though it will raise prices beginning in March. " Harford County Public Library customers are savvy readers and demand for books in eBook format has increased dramatically over the past year.

As Harford County Library nears a circulation record, deep budget cuts have forced administrators to lay off staff, reduce purchases of new materials and limit hours. Audra L. Caplan, library director, spent Friday delivering layoff notices to several of her staff and trying to find a way to keep all 11 branches open. Caplan would not say how many employees she had to let go, but they were in addition to the 34 dismissals that County Executive David R. Craig announced Thursday. The library already had frozen 20 vacant positions.

Valerie Gross is the first to acknowledge that she spends some of her free time working, but she finds time to read. A short list of books the library director would recommend includes: The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini. Words that Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, Frank Luntz. The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, Elinor Lipman. My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult. "I have read Words that Work at least 10 times and would read anything by Lipman or Picoult," said Gross.

The concept of a "grand library to anchor a new downtown Columbia" has spurred Valerie J. Gross to revamp the library's 25-year master plan, but it won't be the first time she has been willing to exchange a great vision for an even better one. The executive director and chief executive officer of the Howard County Library was nearing completion of graduate studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1986 when she had an epiphany. Realizing she "immensely loved the work" at her part-time job in the school's music library, Gross opted to follow up her master's degree in voice with a master of library science degree a year later.

Howard County library officials are planning to expand their five-year-old partnership with county schools to include Howard Community College, they announced late yesterday at Cradlerock School. Called the A-Plus Partners in Education, the program has sought to mesh services that the county's libraries offer with public school needs, and now also include students at the college. Estimates are that about a quarter of county public school graduates attend the community college. "Expanding the A-Plus Partnership with the college serves more comprehensively the students of Howard County," said Valerie Gross, the library director.

Bit of a kerfuffle in the book division of the Land of Pleasant Living over the decision by the Harford County Public Library not to stock the popular novel Fifty Shades of Grey . Today The Sun publishes a letter by Mary Hastler, the library director, defending her decision, and it looks disingenuous. No librarian wishes to be accused of censorship, and Ms. Hastler takes umbrage at the accusation. She merely "decision to not purchase 'Fifty Shades of Grey' ... after careful review and research following our materials selection process.

A bill in the House of Delegates designed to expand the pool of people who serve on Carroll County Public Library's board of trustees has been withdrawn. The Carroll delegation's bill, which would have allowed Carroll commissioners to appoint members to the voluntary board from "other sources" without the recommendation of the standing library board, had been opposed by the library board and the library director. "We have reached an understanding with the Library Board of Trustees and believe the issues can be resolved without legislation," Del. Nancy R. Stocksdale, a Republican, wrote in a letter this week withdrawing the measure.

The birds have come home to roost. Come Wednesday, two distinctly Maryland birds - the Baltimore oriole and the raven - will await admirers from their unusual perch in the Maryland State Law Library in Annapolis. The ruby-throated hummingbird and the summer red bird sit there now. They are part of the library's rare collection of John James Audubon's 19th-century Birds of America prints, newly returned from desperately needed art conservation. The $300,000 restoration was part of an $854,000 project to tend to preservation of the library's rare collections.