Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
Following Cree Lahti’s resignation as director of the Pocahontas County Free Libraries and Visitors Centers, the board looked at its options and chose to divide the job into two directorships.
With that in mind, the board hired Green Bank Librarian Hallie Herold as Director of Operations and Joe Miller as Director of Development.
Miller grew up in Ravens-wood, but is no stranger to Pocahontas County. He remembers summertime visits to his grandparents’ cabin near Durbin. He also has a brother who moved to the county years ago to work at Snowshoe Mountain Resort.
Once the COVID-19 pandemic was considered over, Miller and his wife decided they needed a break from their tiny condo in Washington, D.C. and spent two weeks in Marlinton.
“We loved it and happened to be staying across the street from a house that had a big For Sale sign, and I thought, ‘let’s have a look,’” he said.
They went on to buy that house and have been living here for a year now.
Although Miller doesn’t have a background in library science, he does have an impressive résumé. With a PhD in Philosophy, he started his career as a professor at West Point.
“My one cool story in my whole life is that I taught at West Point between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, so to teach war theory at West Point during that particular time was really something,” he said.
After five years of teaching, Miller said he decided he really wanted to focus on how to make the world better. He realized that there is a thirst for knowledge in this country, but sometimes those seeking knowledge find the wrong sources and end up more confused than educated.
“I left academia and tried to figure out a way to make policy more accessible to people,” he said. “How do we go about taking information from experts and getting it into the hands of the people who aren’t experts, but are interested and smart and just need to kind of understand what they need to know.”
This led him to a job at factcheck.org in 2008. He was also a journalist for a time and with both jobs, tried to make sure the information he was sharing was correct and more accessible.
“That’s basically what libraries have done since libraries have existed,” he said. “Here’s information – there’s a lot of it – how do we curate it in ways to make it accessible? How do we match the zillions of books that exist out there to the people who are in our community and figure out what things they need?
“When I saw that the library was looking for somebody, I thought, I can do some of that stuff,” he added.
As director of development, Miller said he is focused on the bigger and longer picture. His job is to ensure the Pocahontas County Libraries are sustainable and can continue to offer services to the community.
“There are lots of needs and there’s a limited pot of funding, so it’s trying to figure out what’s our place in that world as an organization that provides real legitimate public goods,” he said. “It’s trying to think about what’s the best way to make sure that we still serve all the communities that we serve while also making sure that all of the other things that the county needs are things that we can actually do.”
If Miller is big picture, then Herold is the here and now. As the director of operations, she is focused on the day-to-day operations of the county’s five libraries and the programs they offer.
“I’m more hands on,” she said. “Those are the types of things I like to do. I love to be able to travel to each branch and make sure everything is running smoothly. I’m still Green Bank librarian. I’ll be based out of Green Bank, but moving around the county, as well.”
Herold got to experience directorship first hand after Lahti vacated the position last August. For nine months, she was the interim director and had an eye opening experience that led her to want to take a leadership role with the library system.
“It was really, honestly, such a wonderful opportunity to get to try something and figure out what I’m good at and what I like, and the things that I’m not so great at,” she said. “I kind of feel like we found a good team because of our balance. I’m excited about what we’re going to do for the library system.”
There aren’t many changes planned, other than looking at new programs to implement and allowing each branch librarian to have more autonomy at their libraries.
“We are putting together a framework for each of our brand libraries to take on more of a leadership role based on their individual strengths,” Herold said. “There are going to be a lot of things that Joe and I work together on. I’m excited for this collaboration and managing our staff, and having everybody playing a role in a larger team. I think that will definitely increase programming services and community outreach.”
The libraries will continue to be a source of not only books, but a place for groups to gather, a location for special classes and programs, as well as other items that can be checked out like books.
“People tend to think of libraries as places for lending books with an emphasis on the books part, but I think for libraries, a lot of the emphasis is on the lending part,” Miller said. “There’s a lot of stuff you can do here in addition to coming in and check out books.
“I think that’s something people often forget about,” he continued. “You can come in and get a telescope or a kit if you’re going hiking or a metal detector if you lost your ring in the backyard.”
With summer just around the corner, the libraries are getting ready for the annual summer reading program. This year, the theme is “Adventure Starts at Your Library,” and it kicks off June 17, running through July 22.
The program is set up so each library is host one day of the week, so in theory, youngsters taking part in the program can do it every week day, if they have a way to library hop.
“We tried to design it so that if a person had the means, they could go to all five branches because each day of the week is designated to a different branch,” Herold said. “We have the same theme, so there may be some overlap, but we’ll certainly have different programs at each branch.”
With so many things to do and experience at the libraries, Miller said he hopes people will consider it to be their “Third Space.”
“There’s this concept of third spaces in which it is not home and it’s not where you work – it’s this other place where you can go and connect with people,” he said. “Since the sixties or seventies, there’s been a really marked decline in the ability to have those things. We used to have bowling alleys and skating rinks and all kinds of things where you just go and there would be other people there.
“This is one of the last places where you can get that third space – and you don’t have to give anybody money to show up and hang around,” he added.