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Brown City District Library

New Librarian

Shirley Wood, long time librarian for the Brown City Public Library has announced her plans. Shirley has been the “face of the library” for the past 38 years and will be missed by the many patrons who have visited the library those years.

The Library Board of Trustees wish Shirley the very best as she starts a new phase in her life. Faced with the task of replacing Shirley as the director of the library, the trustees sought a candidate who would be able to step in and lead the library. They found such a person, Ruth Kulman, former Brown City Elementary School librarian. Ruth started her duties September 1st this year.

Ruth has many years of experience as a librarian, she, “…was excited to learn about this job opportunity and eagerly watched for it to be posted”. The trustees considered several applications and narrowed the field of candidates to three. The board elected Ruth to be the new Director at their August 1st meeting.

The board are very confident that Ruth will be an asset to our community and to the Library Board because of her enthusiasm for this kind of work. Most of all, she has a big heart to serve the community.

As the school librarian, Ruth modernized the school library while creating more efficient processes, supporting staff, working with students and their families, applying for grants, networking with other school districts, and maximizing the benefits of volunteers. Several of her accomplishments are:

  • improved the layout of the room to serve the use of our students,
  • helped in creating extra space with a loft,
  • created a Harry Potter reading nook space under the stairs
  • Most importantly Destiny (library information software system) was implemented as the school’s library information system. With the addition of 20,000 books to the new system for approximately 450 students, this relaxed and freed up time to focus on teaching students the many uses of the library. This experience will be most important in the near future as the Brown City Public works to implement the Apollo software.

 The Trustee Board encourages everyone to welcome Ruth as she joins the team to move the library into the 21st Century.