Stacey Aldrich was named state librarian of Hawaii on February 18 by the Hawaii Board of Education, filling the position vacated by former state librarian Richard Burns when he retired in in December 2014. Aldrich, a 2003 LJ Mover & Shaker, is no stranger to state libraries: She served as state librarian for California from 2009–12 and as deputy secretary for the Office of Commonwealth Libraries of Pennsylvania from 2012 until this year. The Hawaii State Public Library System (HSPLS) is unique, however, as the nation’s only statewide public library system. The 50 branches, distributed among the state’s five major islands across nearly 11,000 square miles, constitute a single entity; Hawaii has no locally governed (or funded) libraries. Aldrich’s home base is in Old Honolulu on the island of Oahu, and LJ caught up with her seven weeks into her new role (regrettably, not in person). LJ: How has the transition to the new role been? Stacey Aldrich: It’s been good! The challenge is the time zone change—my family lives on the east coast, so it’s six hours. Having to do super high tech time travel mathematics sometimes is a challenge. But it’s beautiful here, the staff is wonderful, and there really is a sense of aloha—this spirit of how people are welcomed—and there’s a real sense of community that I think is quite special. How is the structure of this library system different from others you’ve worked with? Hawaii is the only system in the country that’s statewide, so the state librarian is also the director. In other states the state library can be an office in a Department of Education that’s purely library development, or it can be a real state library that has a collection and all kinds of services and programs. In our case…all 50 libraries are part of one system, and [the Hawaii State Library in Honolulu] is one of our flagship libraries. Does the setup present any special challenges for a state librarian? [My role] is definitely more like a director. In other states the state librarian may act like a director because they have to oversee one library, but they also focus [on] libraries within the state that are their own unique entities. We don’t have all these separate entities—it’s one entity to manage. Have you visited all the libraries? Not yet. We’ve been having our quarterly branch manager meetings, so I’ve been to the Big Island and Maui, and I have been to Kauai. But I do plan in the fall to actually do a walkabout, go to all of the branches so that I can have a good understanding of each of the communities, because they are so different. Each of the islands has its own flavor too. Hawaiian demographics hold some big fluctuations—racially, in terms of income, and where the digital divide is concerned. How do you intend to approach those differences? I don’t know if it’s any bigger than other places I’ve lived, to tell the truth. Parts of California have huge divides between haves and have-nots. In Pennsylvania, too. There are locations that are underfunded, underpopulated. People live in houses, but you don’t know if they have electricity, or how many families are living in them, or if they have running water. I think poverty just looks different in different places. We do have the extremes [in Hawaii]—we have extreme wealth, and then we also have people who do live day-to-day, and I think that’s a challenge anywhere at this point. If you compare it to other places I think we’re not that different from a lot of parts of the mainland. It’s like any other challenge, you have urban and you have rural [libraries]. In our urban areas we’re dealing with all the same issues that are being dealt with on the mainland. I think for libraries it’s about having a good understanding of our populations, of what their needs are, and then ensuring that each of our community libraries can serve whatever is happening within that community. What are some of the advantages of having managed libraries in such a variety of places? I bring a lot of experience, having seen so many different varieties of programs and services. I think I bring a national perspective too, because I’ve participated at the national level in a variety of ways. Currently I’m on the task force for Carolyn Anthony’s Public Library Association [Edge Initiative] project, to look at how we measure services more effectively to show the actual outcomes of services—the value that libraries bring. I think I also bring a bit of a future-forward thought process, because I have been doing futuring work for so many years—looking at how we balance the past and the future, how we help build bridges for people to see where libraries have been, and how we’re changing to meet the needs of our communities in new ways that they might not expect. Reading your Movers & Shakers profile from 2003, I was struck by how forward-thinking you were in terms of the digital shift in libraries. Now that all that has become ingrained in the library landscape, what do you think will be business as usual in another dozen years? I’ve always had an eye on history and on the future, because I feel the future’s like a spring. We move a little bit forward but then we bounce back, and oftentimes we don’t know that we’re bouncing back, we think it’s something completely new. When you actually read historical records, like Melvil Dewey [on the] state of public libraries in the United States in 1899—when you read that, you realize that there are only a few things that have changed. There have been some changes in technology, but we’re still talking about the same things: people don’t know what we have, we don’t have enough funding, we’re about education. And I think, as I’ve been looking forward and thinking about that spring, that there’s a big role for us in areas of convening and being leaders in conversation. That’s happening across the country in some of our larger libraries, where you can see the libraries bringing people together to have conversations about concerns or opportunities for the community. I also still think there’s a role for helping people navigate the new. Technology’s shifting and changing, and our challenge is to stay on top of it so we can better support our communities to stay on top as well. As I expressed earlier, I’m frustrated by the fact that it’s so hard for us to integrate our services easily. How do we as librarians really start to articulate, and find the right people who have the mad skills—the ninja skills—to create the structures that allow us to do that? I think we are living in an integration age. And I think as we move forward, it’s really about how we integrate everything more effectively, because more and more people are integrating their lives around digital and physical. Then the last thing is the role of education, especially through your whole lifetime. With all of the choices for education now…with so many different opportunities, where do people start? I think libraries are the perfect place to start. How do we think about our role, potentially, as learning coaches for people? If we really are part of the education structure, just helping people navigate and pointing them in the right directions to the opportunities and the resources they have [is important]. So there’s this learning coach thing that we’ve been doing. We just haven’t put a name to it. As you settle in over the next few months, what do you have planned for HSPLS? We have an amazing summer reading program, and the staff does a wonderful job at creating opportunities for kids, families, adults, and teens, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what that looks like—what is the impact? Are we really helping summer slide? Are we encouraging more people to read? I’m also really excited about…helping our patrons navigate physical and virtual in a very seamless way. Currently most libraries are struggling with the fact that we have all these different vendors, and they force us into having to have people go into individual boxes to get to information. One of the things we’re going to be looking at is how to integrate our technologies better, how to use what we have to make it easy for people to transition between using our physical and our virtual collections. Have you seen any repercussions to the 2012 conflict between the statewide and local Friends of the Library organizations? So far, no. We have a wonderful statewide Friends group, and we have amazing Friends groups in each of the local communities. Some are more active than others, but we’re very lucky to have people who are so dedicated to their communities and want to make sure their libraries have the resources that they need. So far I’ve had a really good relationship with the Friends. I understand that there were issues in the past, and we’re trying to figure out how we can continue to move forward. What are you reading? On my nightstand I have Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches (Penguin, 2011). And on my to-do list is a book on scarcity thinking, which is pretty interesting.