New director takes over library system
As the new executive director of the Metropolitan Library System, Julie Ballou is in the business of changing lives and exposing people to new worlds.
She believes libraries have the power to do that.
For the past 25 years, Ballou has been sharing her passion with others through a variety of roles with the library system. Now, she has an even bigger platform.
“It is wonderful to be able to share with people what we have and see them get so excited about what we can provide,” Ballou said.
She took the helm of the organization Oct. 8. Before that, the executive director position had been vacant for more than a year. The Metropolitan Library Commission of Oklahoma County voted to part ways with former director Tim Rogers in August 2017.
Ballou said she’s honored and excited for the opportunity.
The Metropolitan Library System, which has 19 libraries, more than 480 employees and more than 404,000 cardholders, is constantly growing and evolving.
“I have the great honor and fortune of leading an amazing team of staff, and that’s what makes us successful,” Ballou said.
The library system has been through a number of changes during the past five years, including retirements, reorganizations and policy changes. Ballou said one of her goals is to try to help settle things after those changes and to make sure staff are comfortable with job responsibility changes that accompanied the reorganizations.
“We really need to take time to assess where we are and make sure everybody has all of the information and the training and tools and confidence and everything they need so that they can be as successful as possible at what they do, which is serving our community,” she said.
The library system also recently conducted a community needs assessment that identified six key areas the organization would like to work on through its programming, collections and other services, Ballou said.
She said those target areas, which overlap in many ways with what the library system does already, are literacy, educational attainment, workforce development, health and wellness, cultural enrichment and civic engagement.
“With more of a focus on what our community needs from us, we can be more effective in helping our community meet those needs,” Ballou said.
Her passion for books and reading started at a young age. As a sixthgrader, she worked as a library aide, shelving books at her school and sometimes going home with a stack of books larger than anticipated because something new caught her attention. To this day, it’s one of the hazards of working in a library, she said.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Oklahoma City University, Ballou earned a master’s degree in library science from the University of Oklahoma.
She has always believed there is a world in books, something she wants to share with others. But Ballou said that once she started working in the field, she realized there was much more to the profession. Libraries provide opportunities to change people’s lives, she said, not only through literacy, but also through other resources and services, including citizenship and ESL classes, workforce development and cultural enrichment.
Ballou started working for the library system as a Sunday librarian in 1993. She’s had a number of other jobs over the years, including as a young adult services librarian for The Village Library and as a materials selector. She has also been manager of the Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library and the Patience S. Latting Northwest Library. Most recently, she served as a regional director and then as deputy executive director for public services with the library system.
When the executive director position came open last year, Ballou didn’t initially apply. She said she hadn’t been in her previous job long, and she felt like one of her strengths was working behind the scenes in public service operations.
Hugh Rice, co-chair of the search committee, said the group reached out to Ballou to ask if she would be interested in the position. The committee, which had hired a firm to conduct a nationwide search, wound up interviewing Ballou and two other finalists from out of state, Rice said.
“What stood out in regard to (Ballou) was her thorough understanding of our system and her many years of dedication in our system,” Rice said.
Ballou had a connection to the library system that out-of-state applicants didn’t, Rice said.
“It wasn’t just another job,” he said. “She had an emotional attachment to it and wanted it to succeed.”
Ballou’s salary is $157,510.