Onetime Librarian Now Does It All in New Mexico

Amigos Director Charlie Kalogeros-Chattan has a full plate these days as the Community Services Director for Los Alamos County, New Mexico. Just over a year ago, the county asked her to serve as the acting director at the close of a period of great turmoil within the county's government, and just three days before the Las Conchas Fire, a destructive wildfire that burned more than 150,000 acres and threatened the county. Charlie's responsibilities grew overnight from librarianship to include the library, parks, recreation, cultural services, and social services contracts. In her new role she assumed oversight of a diverse multitude of county contract and direct services, including the art center, history museum, senior center, teen center, youth activity center, juvenile justice advisory board, open spaces and trails, stables, ice rink, pool, golf course – and the cemetery.

Moving from managing the county library system into supervision of so many non-library services has been quite a career shift for Charlie. "The job is huge," she noted. "I am loving it now that I've gotten over the shock of dealing on a daily basis with things that I knew nothing about." Fortunately, she found she could apply her library management and leadership skills to her new responsibilities.

Much to her surprise, she said, when the county asked her in June to take the job on a permanent basis, she accepted. "I had insisted for months that I wanted to go back to the library as soon as possible, but of course these things are never soon or smooth. In the end this seemed like a good thing to do for both myself and the organization. There's lots of growth opportunity for me, and I am still able to be involved with the library, although in a different way. I'm able to make a contribution to my community, and do all this all under a new County Administrator, who is a true gem to work for."

It is this "different way" of being involved with the library that prompted us to ask Charlie to comment, from her new perspective as a county manager, on the benefits she sees of the library's membership in Amigos.

"At this level, I am even more attuned to the need to provide services in as cost-effective a manner as possible, and of course membership in Amigos enhances that with terrific vendor discounts and high quality, affordable training. I also value my service on the Amigos Board, which promotes information exchange among libraries and communities in the larger region. It allows exploration of best practices among multi-type libraries and communities of different sizes and economic circumstances. The cooperative nature of our profession as demonstrated by Amigos serves as a wonderful model for local governments that wish to become high performing organizations, maximizing the use of diverse talents and sharing resources to get the biggest bang for the buck."

Charlie says the strangest part of her new role is no longer being strictly a librarian after 37 years. "Except," she notes, "I have discovered that you never actually stop being a librarian, and people don’t ever stop perceiving you as one. They just wonder what a nice librarian like me did to get put in charge of the cemetery."