Kathy Pagles featured on WebJunction!

As I mentioned in my last post, Kathy Pagles from Blount County Public Library was our trainer for the ROSA (Reaching Out for Spanish-Speaking Audiences) workshop last Friday. I failed to mention that Kathy was featured on the WebJunction website as a trainer for this program. Check it out at: http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=17853

The Feature on Kathy Pagles:
Kathy has been the director of the Blount County Public Library in Maryville, TN for the past seventeen years. She has watched her community change and grow and the library along with it, until it is now one of the largest, busiest, non-metropolitan libraries in the state, serving the entire county of nearly 115,000 folks. Kathy spent several years in teaching and banking before taking the plunge into librarianship. The world of libraries offered her the chance to remain a generalist - able to pursue many areas of study which continue to interest her - and to advocate on behalf of all to whom the library is a primary source of information and lifelong learning. The opportunity to become an advocate for outreach to the growing number of Hispanic speaking persons who are coming to east Tennessee is one she is grateful to have.

Kathy has been the President of the Tennessee Library Association and the East Tennessee Library Association. She has served as public library representative to Tenn-Share, a consortium of TennShare, an organization of about 600 members committed to resource sharing, particularly those which are digitized and she has served on the Tennessee Advisory Council for Libraries associated with the Tennessee State Library and Archives. She is currently Vice-President/President Elect of the Maryville Kiwanis, sits on the Blount County Historical Museum Board and the Blount County Education Foundation Board. She is active with the United Way and her church. She is most proud, however, of the role her library has come to play as a community center, averaging about 1200 visitors a day who enjoy annual festivals, frequent musical performances, and fanciful competitions, such as Edible Books. She looks forward to the day when the Hispanic community also looks to the Library for resources to help bridge the digital divide and close the information gap.

Looking forward to retirement, somewhere down the road, Kathy has begun to collect books and to increase her yarn and fabric stashes, sure that some day she will have "the time." Until then, she plans to enjoy her family and friends and the beautiful surroundings of Blount County - and read and knit when she can.