Yesterday the Tompkins County Public Library’s Board of Trustees confirmed Susan Currie as the new library director, despite objections of the UAW Local 2300, the union representing the library staff. Currie, who served for the past year as a member of the library’s Board of Trustees, generated a strong backlash from the union, who felt that her position on the board of trustees while they were considering her for the directorship tainted the nomination process.

“[Currie] may be a great person and may make a super director. Several staff who know her say she seems pretty nice,” stated a letter sent from the UAW to the Tompkins County legislators on Sept. 15. “However, the fact that she did not resign from the library board before she applied to be its employee does once again raise concerns about trust and transparency at the library.”

Pursuant to the board’s accountability statement of March 2008, trustees must disqualify themselves whenever a conflict exists or could appear to exist. According their letter, the union felt that, as a sitting member of the finance and personnel committee, the committee that sets the benefits for the director, Currie was required to resign her position to eliminate any ethically questionable situations.

Currie was one of the final two candidates for the director’s position, which was vacated by the retirement announcement of Janet Steiner in March. Currie and Roland Shaw, the Lewiston Library director who was the other for the position. Each candidate was subject to a review and state qualifying exam. Because she was a possible candidate for the position, Currie recused herself from any trustee activities relating to the directorship, she told the Ithaca Journal. Currie and Shaw had two of the three highest scores on the exam and both sustained about equal support from members of the library staff.

In response to the allegations made by the union, Henrik Dullea ‘61, president of the library’s Board of Trustees, sent an email to the members of the legislature, defending Currie’s nomination.

“Susan Currie would not and could not be a finalist for the director’s position unless her score on the state exam was among the top three. To force her to resign from the board when she had no reason to know in advance whether or not she would be a final candidate would have been unreasonable,” Dullea wrote in an e-mail to county legislature. “She has neither received any additional consideration as a candidate because of her board membership nor has her membership been held against her.”

In addition to questioning the ethics of the nomination, the union also questioned Currie’s qualifications, citing her experience in academic libraries as incompatible with the predominantly non-academic and children’s collection of the TCPL. Currie has, in the past, served as the associate director of university libraries at SUNY Binghamton and as the director of resource planning for the Cornell University Library. In her almost 25 years of experience, however, she has never worked in a public library.

Despite these objections, the board unanimously approved Currie in a special meeting held yesterday at the Tompkins County Public Library. The resolution, read aloud and put into motion by Dullea, was quickly seconded and approved. There was no debate or discussion during the allotted time.

“I would like to thank the board for giving me to step off of the board and serve as the director of the library.” Currie said. “I am really looking forward to getting to work with everyone. Thank you. I can’t wait to start.”