By Dianne Loyet
Since January 1st, Mahomet Public Library has been under the leadership of a new director.
John Howard, originally from Davenport, Iowa, officially took over as Director after shadowing former library director Lynn Schmit in November and December 2018.
The new director has a lifelong connection with libraries.
He has considered libraries his “happy place” since the age of six and describes the day when a new library opened in his Davenport neighborhood as “one of the biggest days of [his] life.”
Even today, he considers that Davenport neighborhood library (now closed) to be his favorite.
Surprisingly, Howard did not originally pursue a career in library science.
“If someone had said to me in high school that you could run a public library, that’s what I would have studied, and that’s where I would have started,” he explained.
However, as a young man, Howard did not see himself as a librarian. He earned a degree in business and music education at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. After graduation, he worked as a fundraiser, mostly for the Catholic Church.
Among his successes was helping the Catholic parish of Geneseo, Illinois, recover from a two-and-a-half million dollar debt.
After 20 years as a fundraiser, Howard switched to corporate training.
It was in his role as a corporate trainer that he first worked in libraries, specifically, the Alliance Library System in East Peoria, in 2007.
His contract with the library system ended in 2008, during the recession, and Howard was unable to find another corporate training opportunity. He was hired as a clerk at Morton Public Library, however, and he has worked in libraries ever since.
He eventually became technical coordinator of the Morton Public Library and was later director of the Farmington Public Library as well.
It is not only the library which brings Howard to East Central Illinois. One of his children, a student in the University of Illinois veterinary medicine program, lives in the area and just gave birth to her first child.
Living and working in the area is an opportunity to be closer to his daughter and grandchild at this crucial time in their lives.
So what might be in store for the Mahomet Public Library under Howard’s leadership?
Howard believes that “each library has to look at their community and find out how they can serve it better.”
Two touchstones for the director are literacy and lifelong learning; he believes they will always be the core of a library’s mission.
While acknowledging that physical books are only a portion of what public libraries provide today, Howard is confident that libraries like Mahomet’s will always offer books.
“Demand for e-books is flat,” he says. “In libraries I don’t think you’re ever going to get away from the benefits of reading, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, for people in this society and that being kind of a cornerstone of what we do.”
Howard further points out that, although the Internet is generally the first stop for people seeking information these days, many subsequently turn to the library collection or reference librarians for more in-depth information.
In the short term, the Mahomet library’s patrons shouldn’t expect to see a lot of changes.
Howard points out that significant changes are unnecessary because the library has been extremely well-managed by a qualified and well-trained staff.
He says that they are doing a great job of serving the community, and he sees his own challenge as learning the community and discovering how to serve it as well.
To that end Howard has been interviewing the library staff, asking two main questions: “What is really special about the Mahomet Public Library?” and “What do you want me NOT to mess up?”
In the long term changes will be made, but they will be guided by a new strategic plan.
Howard explains that the library board drafted a strategic plan last year but waited to finalize it until the director position had been filled.
Now that Howard is officially in the position of director, he has provided some input on the plan. Library patrons can expect to see the final draft of the strategic plan adopted some time this winter.
