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11/22/2017 07:30 AMWhen Guilford Free Library Director (GFL) Sandra “Sandy” Ruoff retires on Nov. 30, she’ll be just two months shy of 41 years of GFL service and just a few days ahead of serving Guilford as a newly elected selectman.
“I’m leaving on a Thursday, and the first meeting of the new board is the next Monday, so I’ll have one day off. I’m used to being busy,” says Sandy, who is also a past Connecticut Library Association (CLA) president and served CLA for many years as its legislative co-chair. “In my life, for 10 years, I had two jobs. So I’m ready to retire, but I don’t want to go to a screeching halt.”
From heading up the successful effort to renovate and expand the GFL building a decade ago (including an initiative to raise $1 million) to overseeing development of staff, programming, and technological advances, Sandy has a proven track record of visualizing goals and achieving them. While she couldn’t be certain if she’d win a run for office, Sandy visualized retiring and starting a new chapter as an elected town leader.
“I thought, ‘What can I do that works for me, personally, and also might be beneficial?’ About two years ago, I started thinking the municipal election will happen in 2017, and maybe that’s something I can strive for,” she says.
On Nov. 7, 2017, Sandy earned enough votes to take her place as a Democratic member of Guilford’s Board of Selectman (BOS) for the 2017-’21 term. As an involved citizen and through her work with GFL, Sandy brings some valuable experience.
“On my path to this election, as town department head, there were certain boards and commissions I couldn’t serve on, but I was fortunate enough to be involved in looking again at affordable housing in Guilford, because we have some, but we could always use more. The town wrote a grant for exploring areas along Route 1 and Town Hall South where an affordable housing development might make sense, and we had to have a volunteer committee to administer that grant, and I’m the chair of that. So that gave me a little bit of local government exposure,” says Sandy.
The BOS appointment placed Sandy on the Housing for Economic Development Committee.
Add to that government exposure “all the years I sat as a department head at various town meetings,” she notes. “I was there to be mainly focused on library needs, but I certainly listened to presentations about the various buildings that were built and various initiatives that were going through the town, because when you go to those meetings, you’re exposed to what’s going on.”
Sandy also presented GFL initiatives to town leaders, especially when leading the effort create the next-generation GFL facility at 67 Park Street, which re-opened in 2008. It took two referendum votes and plenty of persistence to gain town-wide approval, in 2006, to allow for financing the new facility.
“The renovation-expansion of library was eight years of effort on the part of many people,” says Sandy.
It’s definitely a highlight of her career, but perhaps not the one Sandy sees as most notable in the grand scheme of GFL’s history during her tenure.
“I’m sure everyone would expect it would be the renovation-expansion,” says Sandy. “But the other thing, that kind of had a momentum of its own, was from 1990 going forward, when suddenly the whole way that the library provided information started to really change.”
Sandy’s GFL career began as children’s librarian in January 1977. In that first year, she helped transition the department from next-door space in the Major Lathrop House to the new Children’s Room (added to the original library in December 1977). In 1978, legendary GFL Director Edith B. Nettleton retired after 44 years of service; Associate Director Jean D. Baldwin was named director, and Sandy became associate director. In 1987, Baldwin retired, and Sandy became director.
That was four years after GFL began automating its circulation system and one year after joining the LION library computer network that linked what was, at the time, an astonishing 17 libraries by computer. The most significant technological changes arrived, as Sandy notes, in the early 1990s.
“We got our first computers in 1983, but we got hooked up to the Internet in the early 1990s and got rid of the card catalog in 1993, and those were seminal changes. We had staff that cried when the card catalogue went out the door,” she says. “It was a hard transition to make, especially for those of us who had grown up one way, and had to, in our 40s and 50s, try to learn a whole new vocabulary and way of being. But now, 25 years later, this is the way we do it. And I really commend the people who were around in my age group, because I think the transition was the hardest for us. I intellectually believed in it from the start, but trying to learn new things and figure out where it fit within the library was a real challenge.”
It was also a time of uncertainty for municipal libraries, as the Internet’s rise brought predictions of people no longer needing libraries as an information source. Of course, that prediction never came to pass. In fact, much the opposite is evident at GFL.
“The library was always a community hub, but now, partly because of the expansion and renovation, we have the facilities to offer the programs that we want to offer,” says Sandy. “And we have thousands of people using the library every month, and thousands of programs within the year.”
Part of GFL’s ability to offer materials, programs, and technology to its patrons is due to the support of the all-volunteer Friends of the GFL.
“The Friends group was formed in 1973, and I was always involved with the Friends, even when I was children’s librarian and assistant director,” says Sandy. “The Friends’ big book sale started in 1981 when I was assistant director—the Friends made $500 at the first book sale. This past book sale [in September], they made $53,000. So I feel that as I grew, the Friends grew. If the Friends went away from this library, the library would exist, but it would be like taking it to black and white from color.”
Especially through her affiliation with Connecticut Library Association, Sandy’s visited many libraries statewide and says Guilford truly has a gem in GFL.
“I’ve visited most of the libraries in Connecticut, and there are some wonderful libraries, but I think for our size town and for the budget that we have, we give people 110 percent back.”
Sandy gives kudos to the GFL staff and its newly appointed director, Rob McCoole, who has been with the library for 11 years.
“Right now, we’re positioned with a great staff, and I just expect bigger and better and more,” says Sandy, adding she enjoyed fostering “fun” as part of the work climate. “We’ve hired people with the skills to carry out what we’ve identified as what needs to happen in the library, but we also take great pride in having people work in more than one department. So I think the staff is very knowledgeable and can be helpful to the public.”
A Guilford resident since 1987, Sandy came to GFL from her work of nearly four years with New Haven Public Library (and before that, nearly three years with Southern Connecticut State University’s Buley Library). As a teen, Sandy’s very first paying job was also at a library in her native Suffolk County, Long Island.
“I loved to read, and I was in Girl Scouts, and we got a merit badge for volunteering at the library. So I went and saw some kids working there that were older, and I thought, ‘Hmmm...I could work here,’” says Sandy. “I was also motivated by getting a paycheck! I started working at the Smithtown Public Library when I was 16. So I’ve pretty much worked in libraries for 54 years.”
Although she’s leaving GFL, Sandy has several good reasons to keep her coming back to Park Street and the west side of the historic Guilford Town Green, including her new selectman’s role and her continuing assistance to Guilford Savings Bank (GSB) as a member of the GSB Board of Trustees.
“The library’s at one end of the Green and Guilford Savings Bank is at the other end, and now I’ll be going to the Town Hall, which is in the middle,” says Sandy.
While she plans to keep initial visits to GFL at a minimum following retirement, Sandy will remain active with the Friends, she says.
“I’m going to stay with the Friends and I think there will be a role there for me at some point, and I think that will be my connection to the library,” says Sandy.
She’s also looking forward to visiting GFL and enjoying programs “as a citizen.”
“I’m not going to hide, but I’m going to definitely take a big step backwards,” says Sandy. “I do still read print books, so I may have to sneak in the back door and get some fiction!”