New Library Director Has Big Dreams for MPL

Yvette Couser did not have her heart set on being a librarian from a young age. She didn't leave high school and begin studying library sciences. Heck, growing up she barely used a library.

But you'd never know it talking to her now, just four months after stepping into the role as the director at the Merrimack Public Library.

Couser, who took over when Janet Angus retired at the end of September, has a great vision for the library, but she knows it's baby steps to realize her dreams.

New beginnings

It was in South Bend, Ind., while her husband was earning his Ph.D that Couser sort of fell into working in a library.

With a background in theater, a bachelor of the arts from New York University, and having most recently worked at St. Mary's College as an administrative assistant in the College of Multicultural affairs, Couser applied for a job as a children's paraprofessional in Indiana's county library system, and got the job, which involved running the children's department and managing the staff.

“I kind of just learned on the go,” Couser said. “Being a theater major, a writer and an administrative assistant, all of those things helped.”

While living in Indiana, and working in the library, and eventually on the Book Mobile, a traveling library of sorts, Couser started her Master's degree in library sciences.

She suspended it for a year when her family moved to Germany in 2004-05, but finished it via video, satellite and online when they returned to the U.S. and settled in New Hampshire, where her husband's family is from.

Couser worked at the Durham Public Library and did her internship at UNH's Diamond Library, to get a feel for a different kind of pace. She became the head of the children's department in Merrimack in 2009, a position she held until Oct. 1, when she was promoted.

From there to here

Couser said libraries are a very different animal in New Hampshire than in the St. Joseph County Library System, where she got her start in Indiana.

Unlike New Hampshire, where most towns have their own library, Couser worked in the county library system in South Bend, where libraries were centered around neighborhoods, in areas where there was a lot of stuff going on. A library could exist in an area that was a heavy shopping district and if that district died down, the library could then move to a new location where the population was moving.

It's a totally different system, Couser said, and far ahead of the curve when it comes to libraries in New Hampshire, which allows the new library director to dream big.

In South Bend, Couser worked under Donald Napoli, a director who originally hailed from Boston and had an amazing vision, Couser said.

“He really understood that libraries need to create and set the trend,” she said.

He was a regular attendee of library conferences where they latest and greatest in technology was unveiled and would be ready to adopt it immediately.

Libraries in Indiana had self check out long before she came to New Hampshire in 2007. Merrimack just set up its first self-checkout system last fall.

They already have self return, an idea Couser refers to as science fiction-like, and one that excites her so much that her eyes lit up as she pulled out her phone to find photos of the set up that allows patrons to check in their own books, which then move onto a conveyor belt and using a chip technology in the book, self sort themselves to the appropriate bins to be put away later.

Couser knows this sort of technology at this point is only a dream in Merrimack, which has bigger hurdles to tackle.

Budgets, as as become the norm, are tight and long-range planning has reached a stage of necessity.

Couser is excited to hear what ideas their planning group that was recently put together will come up with over the next several weeks.

Moving forward

When she set her goals in October, the top of her list was to improve professional development, provide more outreach to people who aren't using the library or could benefit in better ways from services it provides and to get a strategic plan together.

She is already working with the trustees to rewrite job descriptions as many of them have changed as the staff has been whittled over the last several years. Couser said it is important that if they are going to work smarter in the library, that they need to do more cross training of positions and outline expectations of the various positions going forward.

And there are other projects already being worked on.

Like eReaders that will be hitting circulation in the very near future. A donation from Merrimack Friends and Families last year allowed the library to purchase a variety of eReaders that will be circulated into public use. They were outfitted with cases and screen protectors and are being pre-loaded with books. Everything one will need to check out an eReader will come in a bag with the device. Couser and the trustees are finalizing policy to go with the eReaders and training staff in order to get them ready for circulation.

There has also been a great deal of weeding of collections going on, and some reorganization in the library to open up space and uncover windows, bringing more light into the facility.

They are preparing to clear out the Lowell Room, that front room in the library that looks out to the intersection of Baboosic Lake Road and Daniel Webster Highway.

“One thing we really need here immediately is more seating and more meeting space,” Couser said.

The Lowell Room is going to become a space for that, with plans to add more chairs to the room and a conference table in the middle. To do this, they must go through the 10,000 volumes in that room – science fiction, biographies and large print books – and work them into other parts of the library.

Couser said they will also be reducing their VHS collection heavily, and she's set a goal of mid-March to get much of the weeding of collections done, so they can get that meeting space open and usable.

Couser and the trustees have also hired a replacement for her, Liz Gotauco, who is now the youth librarian, covering children and teen services.

“She's great and she's already started coming up with some fabulous ideas, Couser said.

Down the road

Couser said she dreams about the day when there is an app that allows someone to scan their library card from their iPhone. And that surely can't be far away, she said.

Imminent in Merrimack, however, is a trial the library is starting with Freegal, a downloadable music service that allows library card holders to dowload three free songs a week, and keep them. It offers music from the Sony catalog and no one in the GMILCs library consortium is using it yet. Merrimack will be the test site, and it should help them to clear out some of the CD collection.

“We'll try it for a year and if it does not work, if the patrons don't like it, we'll try something else,” Couser said.

She said the planning group that is coming together is a point of excitement, and they had a great response for it from people who are very enthusiastic about the library, but she also desperately wants to hear from the people who don't use the library to find out what they want, what would bring them back, or even to the library for the first time. There is so much more the library can be doing, but it takes those on the outside to help show what those things are, she said.

Couser said she knows strategic planning is the key to their success if they are going to get to the point of building a new library. Being sensitive to tax rates and yet knowing that they need more space is a delicate balance, but if Couser's ultimate goal could become reality, they will be working on a new building in the next five years, through creativity and planning and whatever it takes.

“I know we can't do the best of what we want to in this space,” she said.

Couser said they can weed and rearrange and add new programs, but “that's not exactly what Merrimack needs and not what it deserves, I think.”

Couser said she gives a lot of credit to the staff at the library for it's professionalism and ability to work through the problems they've had with budgeting, staffing and hours changes in the last few years.

“We have a great staff doing the best with what they have and always working to be better,” she said.

It's been a whirlwind of a road that has brought Couser to where she is, but she couldn't be happier with the challenge in front of her and the dreams she hopes will one day be reality.

When she was 21, did Couser think she'd become a librarian? Absolutely not, she said. But as life progressed, she pushed toward another passion, along with theater and writing.

“I think all the different things you do in life are there to prepare you for the next thing,” said Couser, who knew once she started school for library sciences that she wanted to work as a director one day.

Though it wasn't an easy decision, knowing she'd be away from her family more, Couser said it was the right one.

“I didn't think it would be this soon,” she said of becoming director. “But when the opportunity presented itself, I decided to take it.”