As a youngster Jennifer Podolsky, Princeton Public Library’s new executive director as of mid-February, always dreamt of being a teacher. And teaching is something she has pursued for her entire career, first as a media specialist in public schools, then as a consultant to librarians on connecting with small businesses, and most recently as an executive and mentor to librarians on her staff.
Qualities she exhibited in early childhood might have predicted her career path: her love of learning and school; her curiosity in pursuit of different types of knowledge; being the child in her family who “could always be caught in a corner reading a book”; and, as the middle child with two rough and tumble older brothers, and a younger brother and sister, “a quiet observer of people and behavior.”
Although all of Podolsky’s diverse experience contributed to her selection as Princeton’s new librarian, her most recent position as director of the East Brunswick Public Library showed she was up to the task. When she heard about that job after spending five years at the New Jersey State Library, she felt like she had the necessary experience. Having worked with many library directors, she remembers thinking, “Oh, I can do that.”
“It was a big leap, but after working all over the state I felt I had gotten such great experience with what libraries do and what they are capable of doing,” Podolsky says.
Podolsky says she worked well with East Brunswick Public Library’s large, “really wonderful” staff. “I enjoyed the mentorship aspect of my job, trying to motivate people,” she says.
Her first big task was to supervise a small-scale renovation. First, she had fun reevaluating the use of space in the library. “I was able to look at the floor and see what should and shouldn’t be in certain places. Coming in with an outside perspective, it was easy for me to see that points of service maybe weren’t where they should be,” she says. She combined the separate customer service and reference desks into one and added signage to get people to what they needed in the library more efficiently.
The renovation made room for Podolsky to bring in a “maker space,” dubbed EB Create, for creative endeavors ranging from crafts to sewing to 3-D printing — by giving patrons access to a variety of cutting-edge tools. The space includes a recording studio with microphones and sound-mixing equipment for audio, video, and podcasts; a green screen; sewing machines; and four MAC workstations.
Podolsky was also able to add “lending kits” that could be checked out, ranging from a telescope or a GoPro video camera to an acoustic guitar or ukulele.
So, loving her job in East Brunswick as she did, why did she decide to apply for the position of executive director in Princeton? “Princeton has such an outstanding reputation, it was hard to not be drawn to it,” Podolsky says. She also knew that both in staff and services to their community the two libraries were quite similar. And, she adds, “One other thing about Princeton you know is that the community and the municipality really supports the library.”
In the end, given Princeton’s position as a “nationally and probably world-renowned library,” Podolsky says, “when the opportunity came up, I thought, ‘Where I am is wonderful but who wouldn’t want to be at the Princeton library?’” Even her board president in East Brunswick, though sad to see her go, told her, “If we have to lose you, at least it was to Princeton.”
‘When the opportunity came up, I thought, ‘Where I am is wonderful but who wouldn’t want to be at the Princeton library?’’
“We were looking for an outstanding librarian who was a visionary, who looked forward as to where libraries were going and how to make Princeton at the forefront, and that’s exactly what we got,” says Ruth Miller, president of the Princeton Public Library’s board of trustees and member of the hiring team. In fact, Podolsky was rated as number one by every single person who interviewed her, Miller adds.
Not only was Podolsky experienced as an executive director, but Miller found her to be extremely thoughtful about the job. “She didn’t need to see everything stay the same. She had notions about the changing library environment, how STEM programs can interact with arts programs, and how the nature of the way kids read and absorb information is so different from the way it was when we were growing up.”
“First of all, she has the background, and second, she looks forward, and that was so important to all of us. She wasn’t somebody who was going to come in and maintain the status quo. We wanted someone who would push us all to a new level.”
“We were also looking for someone with the kind of personality that made her appealing to a wide segment of the Princeton population, from little kids to a diverse set of teenagers to potential donors, and she has got that kind of personality. She is very appealing when you sit down and talk to her. I’ve become very fond of her even in the very short time she’s been around — I really think she’s terrific.”
One quality that Miller has noticed and admired is her willingness to adjust her ideas away from an initial impression after additional factors have been brought to her attention. “She’s really flexible and will be willing to adapt her ideas depending on what makes sense for her community,” Miller says.
Podolsky spent her first weeks in Princeton trying to get to know the community, including institutions, nonprofits, businesses, and individuals and all the library’s stakeholders, including its 75-person staff.
“The challenges are continuing to make sure that Princeton stays the pillar of excellence that it is in the community and that we continue to meet the needs of the community,” Podolsky says. “My goal now is to evaluate where we are, what we’ve done, what has worked and what hasn’t — by really listening. And also getting to know the community: What is this community? What is important to it? What are the services the library provides? What are people needing? I’m also excited to meet the business community and see what can the library can do to better partner with it.”
A more immediate challenge is to fill the vacuum left when former director Brett Bonfield moved to his new position last April. “I’m focusing on making sure the staff has a leader in place — someone who will listen to what is happening and address any concerns they may have.” She has already observed that her staff is hardworking and so passionate about what they do that they even come to board meetings. “I think that’s wonderful that they have such a holistic view of wanting to know what is happening on every level,” she says.
Summing up what she brings to the table, Podolsky says, “I think my background working in all different types of libraries helps me. I know what it is like to work in a school when I talk to teachers and school personnel. When I talk to businesses, I’m attuned to what the business community needs. And also in terms of technical outreach, I’m always looking in the forefront of what’s coming in that area.”
For a library director, she says, “Balance is the thing.” There are always new opportunities and much to be done, as well as people with different agendas, but the executive director has to listen and assess what the priorities should be, she says.
A Howell native, Podolsky recalls always being outside with her two older brothers and trying to keep up with them as they built things and rode bikes. But what she liked best was being in school. “I feel the same way now. If I could go back to college, I would. I enjoyed the learning, the knowledge, the many different topics,” she says.
Her favorite subject was English, along with social studies and history, and she had an active extracurricular life, participating in choir competitions from fifth grade on and, despite her shyness, performing in school musicals. In high school she sang in the chorus, did cheerleading, ran cross country, and competed in track and field.
Podolsky double majored at Rutgers in English and anthropology. Her first major was English literature, she says, “because I loved books so much.”
‘Libraries are an equalizer — they give to everyone equally. No matter who you are, what your background is, what you have, you can walk into a library and get help.’
She also took education requirements, but while student teaching realized that “to be a classroom teacher wasn’t for me. As much as I loved it, there was something that was missing.” Perhaps classrooms were “too structured” or “the behavioral stuff is what turned me off,” she says. But she hadn’t given up on literature and was considering a graduate degree in medieval literature or romance.
But her thinking changed after she took her first class in archeology, part of Rutgers’ anthropology department. “I was so blown away; I was mesmerized by the field of archeology,” she recalls. She was particularly inspired by her teacher, a middle-aged woman in a male-dominated faculty who had started in archeology as a second career. Not only did this professor inspire Podolsky, but “it opened up a whole world in terms of what interested me, in terms of history and research.”
Already in her last semester at Rutgers, she decided to stay on for as long as necessary to add anthropology as a double major. Podolsky also did both an internship and graduate fieldwork at the Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeological Project in Virginia.
After graduating, Podolsky had two very different job offers: an archeological dig during the cold of winter and assistant editor at the publisher Reed Elsevier, and she chose the second. “That really changed my direction because even though I loved archaeology, and it was fun and interesting, working in a public company made me see libraries in a different light,” she says. Working on imprints like the Catholic Directory and Who’s Who, she was responsible for both shepherding books from copy to publication and for ensuring that all the information was up to date; in the process she interacted with librarians in the company’s small research library.
“After working in publishing, I thought libraries and research were things I was really good at and really enjoyed,” Podolsky recalls. “Whether for book publishing or archeology, I loved looking deeper to find information and making connections with information.” So she decided to go to library school at Rutgers.
As someone with very wide interests, she was surprised to learn that she had to choose a specific path. “I just wanted to work in libraries in general — I enjoyed everything about libraries,” she says.
She studied manuscripts and archives, references, and technology, but in the end was “leaning toward children’s librarian classes and school library media.”
“I think for me not only did it hearken back to my love of children’s books as a child, but that really tied it all together: I always wanted to be a teacher, so it made sense that I would be teaching this important skill, information literacy, how to understand and disseminate information,” Podolsky says.
She had hoped to teach high school English after college, but after earning her master’s degree she ended up working with K-8 students for five years, primarily as a media specialist in public schools. She particularly loved her three years at a K-5 school in Millburn.
“They embraced the library and the importance of information literacy in that school district,” she says. “The school library was integrated into curriculum planning and designing lesson plans.”
Although she loved being in the Millburn Public Schools, Podolsky was interested in working with older kids and also wanted to move back to Monmouth County, closer to the Jersey Shore. She moved to a media specialist position at Bayshore Middle School in the Middletown Township Public School District.
Her new job presented different types of challenges, as children were reaching an age where their pleasure in reading was “on the decline” and it was “difficult to keep them engaged.” Nonetheless, she says, “teaching kids how to do good, proper research and getting them to learn to like it as much as I did was fun for me.”
In 2009 she had been at Bayshore for a year, and the difficult economy was taking a toll on education. “Schools were losing personnel dramatically, and I was the last person hired,” she says.
Then out of the blue a job opportunity came her way at the New Jersey State Library, one she “was not expecting or looking for” but “wasn’t completely out of my wheelhouse.” Her duties would involve technical outreach to small businesses and entrepreneurs and helping public libraries increase their engagement and partnership with local businesses.
Podolsky saw how intimidating it was for many public libraries to work with small businesses, and she found ways to create connections, for example, teaching libraries about resources useful to small businesses, helping librarians develop plans to draw in businesses that might include getting involved in the local merchants association, designating a space in the library for business resources, providing continuing education and skill-building opportunities to businesses, and offering networking opportunities among business owners.
“Large companies have their own research team, and for small businesses we can act like that — we can be your information professional,” she says.
Podolsky also provided statewide information and help to libraries, like coordinating a speaker from the Reference USA database, organizing statewide professional development, and joining then-Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno on a road show through New Jersey about statewide resources for businesses. During the latter, she met many people who stood in long lines at her table. “They had no idea that a library can help a small business person in so many different ways,” she says.
Experiences like these, she says, “really turned my interest back into public libraries, where I had worked part-time while I was in graduate school and while I was a school librarian.”
“The State Library opened that up for me. Before, I was only working with children, but working with small business people and public library staff I got to see all a library can do for its community. I got to see all the different ways the library has an impact.”
As she saw different libraries all over the state and the different things they had accomplished, she says, “I was so impressed by what libraries can do with whatever resources they have — librarians are very creative. Libraries are an equalizer — they give to everyone equally. No matter who you are, what your background is, what you have, you can walk into a library and get help. I thought this is a service I want to be more a part of.” And that thought led her to East Brunswick’s library.
“In terms of my career, I do what I love. It’s important to enjoy what you’re doing. To me, the most important thing is to feel rewarded by the work I do: Can I give back to the community I’m working with or for, and can I get and give equally is a rewarding partnership in my mind,” Podolsky says.
Podolsky, who lives in Freehold, already likes Princeton. “It is like a city amidst the suburban sprawl. I like that I can walk to a cafe but then go on a hike,” she says. “Being outside reenergizes me. If I’m feeling stressed or need to get my head on straight, I go to a park or go hiking.”
Podolsky has already found the Princeton community to be extremely welcoming. “People do love this library; I think people are even more engaged in the library than I ever expected. People really have a stake in what happens here, and people know what’s going on.”
“I want the institution to thrive and be innovative and even ground-breaking,” she says.
Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street. 609-924-9529. www.princetonlibrary.org.
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Jennifer Podolsky brings a range of experiences to her new role as director of Princeton Public Library.,
