A little more than a year after their controversial firing of their previous executive director the Oak Park Library Board has found a replacement.
The Library Board voted unanimously March 27 to hire Elsworth Carman to be the new head of the library, replacing Joslyn Bowling Dixon.
Carman, 44, is currently the director of Iowa City Public Library. He is no stranger to Oak Park, having worked as the Oak Park Public Library’s manager of library services and initiatives for public service from 2011 to 2016.
“There will be some advantages and disadvantages to coming back as a former employee,” Carman said. “The big advantages are I can authentically say that I love the library. I think if I was coming in cold it would take a little while to build up to that. It’s a really exceptional library and I was thrilled during the interview to see so many familiar places and also meet lots of new people who seem like they’re just doing amazing work. My wife and I love the community. We had a really great experience living there when we were there in the past.”
Carman left the Oak Park Library in 2016 to take a job as the director of the library in Marion, Iowa, a suburb of Cedar Rapids. He took over at the Iowa City Public Library in 2019.
Even though he was hundreds of miles away, he stayed connected to Oak Park.
“It’s been a library that I’ve really kept my eye on,” Carman said. “It’s really aligned with my professional values and I feel good about returning to an organization that I really respect and great people.”
Carman is aware of the rifts created by Dixon’s firing and a contentious Library Board election campaign in which both incumbents running were defeated in the April 1 election. He knows that he will have to deal with the divisions that have developed over the past year.
“I think it will require a lot of listening first, kind of letting people say what they need to say and that’ll will help me understand how to balance the sort of healing work with the forward facing work, but I anticipate that there will be lots of dialogue about what’s happened in the past,” Carman said.
One issue he will have to face is whether to reestablish a director of diversity, equity and inclusion position. Dixon’s cuts in that area generated fierce opposition from some library staff and some in the community. Three of the four newly elected library board members made DEI a cornerstone of their campaign.
Carman said he will look at the issue with an open mind.
“It’s absolutely going to be a priority to look at that vacancy and still figure out how that can best serve the library and the moving forward,” Carman said. “Since it’s a relatively specific HR decision, I think it would irresponsible to claim a position before I started but I heard from a number of stakeholder groups in the interview process that it’s a priority to discern what next steps are going to be for that position so I would imagine that will be something that will be kind of talked about from Day 1, and depending on what those decisions are, acting pretty quickly.”
One oddity of Carman’s hiring is that four of the seven Library Board members who voted to hire him won’t be on the board when he begins work in Oak Park on May 27. Current board members Madhurima Chakraborty and Ted Foss chose not to run for reelection while board president Matt Fruth and board member Maya Ganguly were both defeated in their effort to win another term. While some thought it would have been better to have waited to hire a new director until the new board members were seated, incoming board members don’t have a significant issue with the timing, and certainly not with the choice of Carman.
“I’m excited … we’re all starting fresh,” said incoming board member Colin Bird-Martinez.
Ganguly said while all three finalists for the executive director position were extremely impressive, Carman “shined through.”
“His ability to bring wonderful and important and erudite issues in very plain, straightforward, simple language that was accessible to everyone was definitely something that just made him really stand out,” he said.
In a news release announcing Carman’s hiring, he was praised by Chakraborty who led the search committee that worked for months on the search.
“Elsworth’s compassionate, value-driven, and unifying leadership is a great fit for the Oak Park Public Library at this locally and nationally significant time,” Chakraborty stated in the release.
Board President Fruth added Carman “possesses the ability to engage deeply with community members, library trustees and library staff, bringing a community-building and collaborative approach.”
Carman, who grew up in Wisconsin, received his master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Prior to working in Oak Park, he had worked as a librarian at the Washington, D.C., Public Library and at a library in Toms River, New Jersey.
Carman will be paid an annual salary of $165,000 and he will also receive a $10,000 relocation stipend. He does not have a written contract as the executive director position is an at will employee position.
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
