Longtime Scottsbluff library director Bev Russell apparently just couldn’t stay retired. Russell…last year’s Scottsbluff Star-Herald Citizen of the Year…retired in December of 2011 but is now the interim director of the Chadron State College library.

Russell fills the vacancy created by the death last August of Milton Wolf, and is on a contract that runs through the end of June. She learned about the interim position while attending a conference in Kansas City and was immediately interested because her daughter is 1998 CSC graduate and she knew several former CSC librarians.

Russell has three goals at CSC: make the learning commons concept a reality both in the building and online, see the library through an assessment by the Association of College and Research Libraries…whose report will be used to create a strategic plan for the library, and have the CSC library help facilitate the school’s increased used of Open Education Resources…public domain textbooks and other curriculum aids.

Russell says she and the library staff are “information navigators” at a time when the number of books in the library is shrinking while digital resources are growing. That means managing both the remaining collection and the digital resources that will be available both locally and online.

Russell is also excited to be overseeing several projects intended to make the CSC library more user-friendly for students…a place where they go to either study or relax. She remembers having to leave the campus library at the school she attended as a graduate student if she wanted to have a snack or get together with friends.

The Reta King library did have a small coffee shop for a time a few years ago, and Russell says a new one should be open for business this fall.

Plans also call for an IT help desk this spring, a move of the curriculum library into the area that housed the library’s computer lab…whose computers are being set up in pods of 4 around the building’s pillars…and the relocation of the faculty Teaching and Learning Center to the library.

In addition to her interim position at CSC, Russell pastors the Melbeta United Methodist Church in Melbeta and plans to write a book about the current condition of historic buildings in the Panhandle when she is fully retired. She says she’s looking for a photographer to document the structures to covered by the book.