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HEATHER HILL
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
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| Library clerk Gordon Long, seated, shows Midland’s checkout procedure to new Midland Regional Director and Houston transplant Javier Gutierrez. Gutierrez sees the library as a community and cultural center. The Midland Regional Library is the largest of the branch libraries. |
| MEMO PHOTO: TIM CURRAN |
The oldest public library in the West, the library’s circulation and services have ranked it among the best library systems nationwide. Credit Portland’s book-hungry populous to demand such high standards. Most of the system’s librarians hold master’s degrees, but the best libraries require an interactive staff to anticipate the desires and needs of our ever-expanding city.
Texas transplant Javier Gutierrez, the Midland Regional Library’s new head librarian, found himself drawn here because “Multnomah County libraries are one of the best systems to work for, and I wanted to move to the Northwest, so I was lucky to get a job.” He conceded that adapting from Houston, a city matching the state of Oregon in population, has taken some adjusting. His 5-year-old son claimed the move has “ruined his life,” but Gutierrez sees it as a growing experience.
Gutierrez brings 10 years of big-city experience with small-town focus to Midland. After earning his master’s in library sciences, he entered the Houston Public Library system at its southwest branch, servicing an area of 160,000 people, mostly lower-income families. In this stressful environment of broken homes and drug prevalence, Gutierrez worked with at-risk youth and single parents to help to improve the community through literacy.
Gutierrez spoke positively about the experience as a whole. “I was able to connect with them. It helped that I was young and I was brown. Generally back in ‘96, a brown librarian was very rare, still is today, but I think it was great to help them.”
Together with local nonprofits, Gutierrez sponsored community projects aimed at improving literacy skills. In one of their most successful programs, he founded a children’s playgroup incorporating early literacy videos, storytelling, music and the arts, as well as open playtime using educational toys supplied by the library.
Gutierrez also administered parent literacy programs to help families build libraries. He explained, “We wanted to help them build a library because to learn literacy skills, you first need a book, so we gave out books at the end.”
At Midland, Gutierrez hopes to invest in its strengths. “We have the advantage of space, a large meeting room, a small conference room and a story room.” Not to mention a staff to match. “We have 28 staff — 10 reference and 18 service clerks and pages,” he said. “We have the advantage of two youth librarians, so we can have more emphasis on teen programs.” Most libraries have only one youth librarian for the whole range of ages from infants to 18-year-olds. “We want to create a teen council so they have a say on some programs and what they want to see in the library. We can get them more involved. That’s part of our number-one goal.”
He also seeks to welcome the growing immigrant populations to the library through target languages. “We are one of two libraries in the system that will have all of our target languages: Russian, Vietnamese, Chinese and Spanish...We are looking forward to what we can do for everyone.”
Gutierrez sees the library as both a community and a cultural center. “Traditionally, libraries have been tools to acculturate new people into society.” By accruing resources and initiating programs geared to an emerging population, the library not only engages the immigrant community, but also helps acquaint others with their cultures. This October the Midland Library commences a new classical music series featuring traditional music of the target languages. In January the library will begin screening foreign films in target languages with discussions held afterward.
Educating immigrants about how to use the American library system and orienting them to its procedures has proved challenging. “It is foreign to a lot of people, having a place where you get a library card and check out items for free,” Gutierrez said. “You go to Europe or Latin America, the libraries are very different from what they are to us.” Gutierrez prizes the advantages of library membership. “If there’s one thing libraries do, it’s promote freedom of speech, intellectual freedom, and that is a space that the library system upholds.”
Gutierrez’s all-inclusive approach repeatedly emphasizes collaboration with neighborhood councils and local nonprofits as essential to the overall quality of library programs. “My goal is to be the face of the library, involved in community organizations and...figuring out what we can do together and forging partnerships.”
As for his personal aspirations, Gutierrez hopes to connect with the youth of the community. He cited a favorite memory from his days in the troubled southwest Houston district: “One day I was at a park with a bunch of friends, and this little kid in front of us turned around to me and said, ‘I know you. You’re the librarian!’ and I thought, ‘That’s pretty cool.’”
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