Skokie Library Director and Skokie Valley Rotary Club Member Carolyn Anthony.
 
Library director reflects on dramatic changes as retirement draws near
 
Chicago Tribune by Mike Isaacs
 
People who have known Skokie Public Library Director Carolyn Anthony for more than three decades also know that the library she will leave behind this summer has little resemblance to the one she inherited.
 
The library has expanded and been redesigned and reorganized; long-needed parking was finally acquired; resources and databases and materials for checkout were changed and re-prioritized; programming evolved and expanded substantially — and all of it accomplished not just to keep up with 21st Century needs, Anthony says, but to try to stay ahead of them.
 
The library's reputation has grown, too, as the library has earned handfuls of awards and recognitions beyond Skokie — at the state and even on the national level.
 
Anthony is scheduled to retire in mid-July after nearly 31 years at the helm. The Skokie Library Board is currently conducting a search for her successor, officials say.
 
"It's just the right time to enjoy other things," Anthony recently said from her window-encased third-floor office, a room that was not even built when she first arrived in September, 1985.
 
"I feel very lucky to have had this opportunity," she said. "It's not everybody who can do something where they feel their life's work has been so rewarding every day."
 
It's also not everybody who has seen the amount of change that Anthony has seen. She acknowledged that almost every facet of her work venue is different from when she first arrived.
 
The library's collection was primarily books and other print materials with the exception of about 20,000 vinyl record albums, she recalled.
 
"Over the years, we have seen a progression of new formats including audiocassettes, videocassettes, CD's, DVD's, CD ROM databases, online databases, Blu-rays, e-books and e-audiobooks," she recently wrote in the Skokie Public Library's newsletter. "Opening Internet services to the public in 1995 was a landmark. Library staff helped many Skokie agencies and businesses establish their first presence on the Web."
 
During her tenure, she said, the library has added 33,000 square feet and remodeled over 100,000 square feet of space.
 
Those improvements have come with replacing heating and air conditioning as well as lighting and adding a new environmentally friendly green roof. The long-awaited west parking lot was built in stages as houses became available for tear down to complete the project.
 
"It's hard to imagine now how we ever managed with only a parking lot shared with the village," she reflected.
 
Under Anthony, the library developed a series of strategic plans to help establish priorities and guide library growth. Those plans, she said, served as a blueprint for keeping up with changing technology and other advances.
 
In 2008, the library received a National Medal for Library Service that was awarded at the White House. The library's national honor included $10,000, and was overseen by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, in coordination with the White House.
 
A sampling of more recent recognitions include the Community Aware Award in 2012, and receipt of five stars (highest honor) from the Library Journal in 2013. Just recently, the American Library Association gave the library the Excellence in Library Programming Award for helping to lead Voices of Race, a months-long program that examined different aspects of race and race relations. It was part of 2015's Coming Together in Skokie and Niles Township.
 
Anthony was one of the five founding women of Coming Together, which examines a different culture every year. The library under her guidance has worked with other agencies in the community to offer such staple events as the Festival of Cultures, Wednesdays on the Green and Spring Greening to name a few.
 
In 2013-14, Anthony was elected president of the Public Library Association. She was also a president of the Illinois Library Association and was named Librarian of the Year in Illinois in 2003.
 
When she first came to Skokie, she said she had little idea she would be at the same job for so long.
 
"Who starts a job and thinks they're going to be there for 30 years?" she said. "Sometimes things just keep going."
 
She came to Skokie with her husband and two young daughters from a job in Baltimore's library system. At that time, she said, she had never stayed in one job for more than seven years.
 
But her husband found a job he liked, and she found one she loved. "There was something new here every day," Anthony said. "Nothing ever stayed the same."
 
One reason so much changed over her 30 years as director is because the community around the library changed, she said.
 
When she first took over as director, Anthony remembers there were five Fortune 500 companies in Skokie, which still maintained a huge Jewish presence in the community — so much so that the library did not offer programming on Friday nights, she recalled.
 
Those five companies are gone. And as Skokie became increasingly ethnically diverse and library needs changed, the library continued to re-evaluate itself and ask if it was doing all it could do to meet those needs, she said.
 
In 2014, the Skokie Public Library was recognized as a Top Innovator by the Urban Libraries Council after it had adopted a new strategic plan that pushed for more library interaction with the community.
 
"The ways people read, receive and find information continue to change significantly," Anthony said when that award was announced. "Changes in technology and community demographics have contributed to altered expectations of the library. We determined to meet people where they are, engaging them in learning experiences and helping them get materials and information to achieve their goals."
 
The response to this bold new direction not only earned the library award recognition but positive feedback with the people who matter most. In a recent national survey, which the village commissions every three years, 95 percent of respondents gave high marks to the Skokie Public Library.
 
"I've said to people, I think this is a great community because people really appreciate and use the library," Anthony said. "It makes it feel so rewarding. Whatever work you're doing, people take advantage of it here. They love their library."