Photo credit: Cindi Trainor Blyberg

Brett Bonfield stepped into the role of director at the Princeton Public Library (PPL), NJ, on January 19. He succeeds former PPL director Leslie Burger, who announced her retirement in July 2015 after 16 years at the library’s helm. Bonfield, a 2012 LJ Mover & Shaker, served as director of the Collingswood Public Library, NJ, from 2008 through 2015; chaired the American Library Association (ALA) Future Perfect Presidential Task Force from 2010 to 2011, and cofounded the influential online journal of librarianship In the Library with the Lead Pipe—he is now an editor emeritus. LJ spoke with Bonfield shortly after he began work at Princeton to talk about fundraising, blogging, PPL’s 2Reimagine second floor renovation campaign, and what it’s like when everyone knows where you live—both literally and metaphorically. LJ: You moved from Collingswood to a community and library that are similar—both are mid-sized New Jersey towns with single-branch public libraries—but also very different. What has the transition been like? Brett Bonfield: When I got hired to be the director of [CPL] in 2008, I’d already lived there since 2000. My wife had gone through the Collingswood public schools as a kid and had been a teacher in the system. We both volunteered for multiple organizations in the community and we'd been part of the strategic planning process for the school district. In addition to wanting somebody with a library degree who had management, fundraising, and some IT experience, I think what really mattered to [the CPL board] was that we were all in. It was such a huge advantage. People would see me running, or at the farmers market, and they would come and talk to me about the library. It was understood that their funding for this library was going to somebody who was funding the library right along with them—I was a taxpayer just like they were and just as dedicated to the community. I knew that if I ever left the library, I never wanted to give up that level of empathy and the advantage of being present in the community. So we determined that if I was going to apply for this job it would mean moving. Realistically, not everybody who works at a library or school district or police force can live in the town—sometimes the economics of it just don't work out. But I believe that where possible, library directors should try to make that commitment. And it's more than a symbolic commitment—I think it does affect your biases and how you approach your work. I love Princeton, and my new apartment on Humbert Street is wonderful. I get to walk to work, which is great, and it's already happening where people are coming up to talk to me about other people they know who live on Humbert, or how they used to live on Humbert, or how they live around the corner, and it makes easing into the conversation about the library that much more natural. And that's what you want. I want them to talk to me about the library and I want to hear what they want their library to be, and I want to help them make that happen. What has it been like, stepping into a role created by a strong director like Leslie Burger? Is there anything you want to change? I always looked at Leslie as a leader in the field. She was ALA president just before I started library school, so I don't know a library profession pre–Leslie's ALA presidential tenure. And I know her personally—she's smart and thoughtful and makes really good decisions. My assumptions coming in are that the decisions she's made were the right ones. I might notice small things that she just didn't get a chance to get to, or that she hasn't yet told me about. But I have no reason to believe she wasn't right about all the big things. The Princeton Public Library is very clearly operating at or near peak effectiveness. It's not a turnaround situation; I don't need to come in with this plan on how we're going to fix everything. It would be foolish and counterproductive to come in with that sort of attitude. My job at this point is to learn the community first and foremost, and to learn the library. So that's what I've been doing, sitting down with every single one of my colleagues, and also doing the same thing with the board members and community members, either one-on-one or in smaller groups, and meeting other key stakeholders in Princeton. They didn't hire me to be passive. I wouldn't be doing my job if I were. But there's nothing here where I need to come in and change something dramatically.   How is work progressing on the second floor? It’s very close to fully funded. We're about to release the RFP [Request for Proposals] within the next couple of weeks. Certainly by the end of 2016—that's being very, very conservative—we will have the space open and available. It's amazing to be able to step into a renovation project where the design and the budget have basically been taken care of. Again, if you've been part of enough construction projects you know things change during the course of construction—that's the nature of the beast—so I will have to be paying a lot of attention to make sure we get this right. But there's a great team in place. This is one of Leslie's many areas of strength, fundraising and design, and this [project] played right to those strengths. She spearheaded the fundraising and she oversaw the design process. It's a really incredible vision for what libraries have traditionally been, integrated with what they can be going forward. [The space will have] a quiet reading room and small group rooms and also large technology spaces, all on the same floor, with a lot of allowances for the fact that the world is going to change and we're going to need the space to be able to be configured somewhat differently—both on a night-to-night basis, and also there are contingencies built in to the design where we could, if we had to, move some things without having to go through this entire process again. It's interesting, you would think that the open floor plan we have currently would be the one that's the most flexible, but technology doesn't necessarily thrive in an open floor plan. Quiet reading certainly doesn't. Small groups also butt up against each other. So by putting in some walls, we're actually increasing the types of use people can get out of the space and making it more accommodating to more people and more types of needs. I don't think that's how we typically think of walls in our lives, but it's really kind of remarkable. PPL is known for its robust fundraising, including a strong Friends group. Will you be active in the library’s fundraising process? A big reason I was hired [at PPL] is that I have a fundraising background. I started in college as a fundraiser for the New Jersey Environment Federation; [it] shared office space with New Jersey Citizen Action, and I became phone canvas co-manager as soon as I graduated. From there I went to the University of Pennsylvania for eight years doing development and alumni relations, and then spent another year after that at a different nonprofit as head of fundraising and communication. I left that field because I didn't want to do it full-time, but I did it as long as I did because I like it. On balance, about half my job will probably be continuing to make sure the fundraising efforts of the library are attended to. There's a really deep culture of philanthropy in Princeton. [Residents] support Princeton, they support New Jersey and the surrounding communities, and they support things that are nationwide and international. It's a small town that really values its place as a small town, and a walkable town, that's also extraordinarily cosmopolitan—it has this incredible world-class university, a huge range of languages spoken in the schools, proximity to New York and Philadelphia. You cofounded In the Library with the Lead Pipe at the beginning of your career. Why did you first establish it, and how did having a forum to write about librarianship help you move forward? Kim [Leeder] and I were both academic librarian bloggers for the ACRLog, and we got to work with Steven Bell and Barbara Fister. We were finishing up our first year and didn't want to stop writing, and we really liked being part of a team. So Kim suggested creating our own [site] and recruiting some other people we thought were great to join us. We borrowed some of the structure from the Code4Lib Journal, an open peer review, open access journal. We tried to talk about important issues, cite our sources, be as scholarly as possible, and also keep it as readable as possible, and the formula worked. It's been incredibly valuable to have a place where you can go and share your ideas and have readers read them, and to be able to approach people and say, "Hey, I think you're great, would you write for us?" It's the most valuable non-workplace community I've been part of. The editors I've worked with, the writers I edited and who were peer reviewers for my pieces—it was so satisfying to work with them and then share with the world what we created together. When I go to conferences, to go up to people and say I'm at wherever I work plus I was one of the founders of Lead Pipe, people immediately know what that is. They've read it, and they appreciate it, so they know where I'm coming from. Going back to "hey I live in Princeton on Humbert Street," having that as the start of a conversation is really valuable.