An ability to convert setbacks into opportunities is the key to the successful career of Craig Buthod, director of the Louisville Free Public Library (LFPL), KY. Buthod possesses a unique combination of optimism, managerial talent, political savvy, and a willingness to do battle, even after serious losses. This uncanny mix is why he was singled out from strong competitors to be LJ's 2010 Librarian of the Year.
“Less than two weeks after two-thirds of the voters of Louisville defeated a tax proposal to support and change the governance of LFPL in November 2007, Buthod went public with a vow to move forward with the library's master plan to renovate or rebuild the main library, refurbish or rebuild most branches, and add five new ones…to improve library services countywide,” reports Toni Garvey, city librarian of the Phoenix Public Library and LJ's 2004 Librarian of the Year, in her letter nominating Buthod for the award.
Last August, the Newburg Library, a branch of about 8300 square feet in a neighborhood that has never had a branch, opened—less than two years after the defeat of the tax proposal and just one week after “the flood of the century,” to quote Garvey, had devastated the city's main library.
rom LJ's January 2010 cover story: 
