Former Director in Charlotte to Take Over at New Orleans Public Library

Charles Brown, the former director of the struggling Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, NC, was named on November 2 as the new director of the New Orleans Public Library. The appointment is effective November 21.

Brown will oversee the daily operations of the New Orleans system, which will add five new branches in 2012 to replace facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The library has an $8 million budget, 150 employees, and 14 facilities. He will report to the nine-member Board of Directors.

"I look forward to joining Mayor [Mitch] Landrieu and the New Orleans Public Library Board in their efforts to rebuild the New Orleans Public Library system and to fulfill the vision of creating a library system that will become a model center of learning in this community," Brown said in a library press release.

Brown holds an MLS from Columbia University. He also graduated from the John F. Kennedy School of Government Executive Education Program at Harvard University. Before Charlotte, he served as Director of Libraries in Hennepin County, Minnesota, and Arlington County, Virginia.

Brown resigned from his position in Charlotte on June 30 after seven years on the job because of massive budget cuts that resulted in about a third of the staff losing their jobs. Charlotte was the 1995 Gale/LJ Library of the Year.

Brown had to lay off at least 176 employees, close four branches, and cut service hours by 53 percent during his last year there.

"Every layoff has been like a dagger to my heart. It is just painful, heartbreaking," he said at the time.

Coincidentally, this week Charlotte's Library Chief Executive Officer Vick Phillips and Interim Director of Libraries David Singleton were invited to speak at a symposium in London about how the library has been collaborating with Mecklenburg County to recoup the 50 percent cut in service.

Phillips and Singleton were scheduled to give a presentation called, "Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, One Library's Experience Surviving the Great Recession," at the Axiell Symposium.

The Charlotte system has expanded hours at six regional branches and hired back some employees after receiving an additional $2 million from the county, according to the Charlotte Observer.

In addition, the Main Library Committee will hold its first meeting November 14. The seven-member committee resulted from the work of the Future of the Library Task Force which proposed in its March report that the committee be formed and "charged with considering the feasibility of consolidating, downsizing or relocating the functions" of the Main Library. Its work is scheduled to be completed by April 2012.