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Politics & Government

Meet The Woman Who Makes Deerfield Library Tick

Patch goes on the job with Deerfield Public Library Director Mary Pergander.

Since 2006, Mary Pergander has been the driving force behind the success.

The vivacious woman oversees the library’s sizeable professional staff, but also has responsibility for working with a seven-person library board. She supervises the finances, negotiates with vendors, assists patrons with their problems, liaisons with other village officials, and quarterbacks the board’s plans for carrying out a $12 million renovation and expansion program over the next two years.

Voters approved the expansion referendum last November, and since then business has really been hopping for Pergander and her library staff.

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“These improvements are essential to the library’s future. The building is showing its age and we simply can’t offer some of the services that most modern libraries now offer,” she indicated.

She said the library board has assembled an experienced and talented construction management team, and the village is helping the library sell its bonds in a difficult market to finance the project.

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“Our improvements will be substantial. The building’s footprint will be expanded by 10,000 sq. ft. to accommodate many new services that we have needed for years,” she said. Those include greatly expanded opportunities for personal and group study space, new lecture-style meeting space, a quiet reader zone for serious readers and researchers, expanded computer facilities and services, new acquisition of e-books and expanded audio visual services, additional shelf space to accommodate the library’s collection, and many other upgrades,” Pergander said.

Of course, Director Pergander is the point person for many of these activities. She comes well prepared for such a challenging assignment.

Mary has a magna cum laude undergraduate degree in nutrition and dietetics from Northern Illinois University, a master of business administration with high honors from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, and a master’s degree in library sciences via Internet studies with the University of Illinois.

She started her career in the health sciences field, but after several years felt unfulfilled and decided on a career change.

“I found the field of librarianship fascinating. Librarians come from a variety of interesting backgrounds. They are interesting people. They love the pursuit of information, as I do, then organizing and sharing it with others,” Pergander said. “I enjoyed being around librarians. I find them mentally stimulating,” she said.

Her first job in the field of librarianship was with the Fremont Public Library in Mundelein. She was responsible for a departmental staff of seven in an impressive new library facility of 70,000 sq. ft. that served 29,000 patrons throughout the district.

Mary was manager of youth services, and over the two years she was employed there she increased young adult circulation by 37 percent. Her responsibilities included strategic planning for both youth and adult services, she also established the first teen volunteer program and conducted the district’s first Spanish-language bilingual program.

It was her next job that prepared her for chief executive responsibility. She was appointed director of the Lake Bluff Public Library. As CEO, reporting to a board of directors, Pergander was in charge of a staff of 17 librarians and responsible for managing a budget of $660,000 in a 12,000 sq. ft. facility. The library served 6,000 village residents and patrons in nearby unincorporated areas.

“As a small library I was exposed to all types of operations and did almost everything including shoveling snow,” she said with a smile. "It was a perfect opportunity to learn all facets of the profession during the nearly four years that I was at Lake Bluff,” she said.

Pergander moved on in 2006. She became aware that the Deerfield Public Library was seeking a new director to replace Jack Hicks who decided to retire after a long career as director in Deerfield. She went through a competitive hiring process carried out by the elected library board, was selected from several finalists, and began her new assignment as director in July 2006. 

“This was exactly the type of career challenge that I was seeking,” she said. “It offered me a long-term opportunity to be the director of a larger library, and I felt that I was ready for such a challenge.”

She quickly immersed herself in the business of being the library’s director. She said the job entails three primary responsibilities: Serving the community, serving the library board, and carrying out the administrative responsibilities of overseeing the operations of a productive and smooth-running operation.

The library offers a varied portfolio of services that are too long to mention here. But in response to the question of what are the library’s current needs, obviously renovation and expansion are at the top of the list, and the process is already well underway.

However, in the near future Pergander said staff is experiencing a skyrocketing demand from patrons for more e-books and electronic readers. “We are currently working with a grant consortium along with other local libraries to expand this popular service,” she said.

She points out that libraries have been changing. They are not just for individuals anymore. They also serve student groups, self-improvement teams, and many other community needs  as well. Pergander said it is her responsibility to address those needs as best she can with the resources available.  

What other changes does Pergander see during the next decade? She expects that expanding technology will drive many changes that are difficult to envision today.

“Computerized research will continue to expand. Content will be more virtual (electronically-accessible) and be more convenient to download from the Internet. However, we will still need the social interaction and traditional informational points of access that a library has traditionally offered its patrons,” she maintains.

Will printed books as we know them still be around in the 2020s, we asked? “Yes. While publishing is undergoing a revolution now, there will still be books and periodicals in some printed form,” she said. However, Pergander expects electronic tablet (iPad, Nook, Kindle} informational content to be much more prevalent. “It will be overwhelming,” she said.

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