Iowa City Public Library director Susan Craig retiring after 41 years

IOWA CITY - Finding the distance from Des Moines to Minneapolis or looking up recipes was usual work when Susan Craig started as an information librarian at the Iowa City Public Library in 1977.

Now, 41 years later, as Craig readies for retirement and wraps up her 24-year tenure as director, a librarian's job today looks a bit different, namely because of technology. The library now offers services such as movie streaming, a digital media lab and online chats.

'I've been a librarian for 40 years and the cycle of change, the pace of change, feels like it has exponentially picked up over those 40 years,” Craig said.

In addition to those technology services, the library also started an art-to-go program, a teen center and book mobile during Craig's tenure. Last fiscal year, the library circulated 1.266 million items and saw 731,000 people walk through its doors.

'Susan understood very early in her career that libraries were much more than books,” said Geoff Fruin, Iowa City's city manager. 'She saw that libraries were places where individuals and families could find ways to improve their lives and where community members could gather to advance a wide range of causes.”

Craig's interest in libraries came at an early age. She grew up just blocks from the Waterloo Public Library and would check out books at least twice a week during the summer. At 14, her first job was shelving books.

Ann Michelle Pisarik, Craig's daughter, said she instilled the importance of reading in her children. Pisarik grew up participating in library programs and remembers sitting on the lap of Clifford the Big Red Dog, a large stuffed-animal version of the popular children's book character, in the children's area.

This Christmas, Pisarik said she can expect a big box of books from her mom, just like she's done for her children and grandchildren on every other birthday and holiday. Among other things, Pisarik said she was taught the importance of reading, especially to infants, through her mom's career.

'I've been trying to think of the big lessons that my mom taught her kids, especially through the library,” Pisarik said. 'You think of a library and you just think reading, but that idea of access to information and equal access to information and how the library provides that for people, that's something my mom has instilled on all of us kids and I think everywhere in the library as well.”

Maeve Clark, the Iowa City library's adult services coordinator, said Craig embraces the library as not just a place for information but also as a community center. Clark has worked with Craig for 26 years and credits employees' long tenures at the library to Craig's leadership.

'Susan has a very open-door policy to her management style. she's very much a planner, which I am not. But she is willing to work with people who aren't so much planners but who can come up with wacky ideas and she can form into a program or process that we can adopt or not adopt,” Clark said.

When Craig leaves the library for the final time on Dec. 28, she's expecting the moment to be bittersweet. But on her desk is a sticky note labeled 'January 2019” with a list of non-fiction books - Michelle Obama's memoir, one called 'Our Towns” and a Winston Churchill biography - that she's hoping to tackle with her new free time.

'I'm leaving the library as an important community center for Iowa City, one that supports everybody in there information needs. And I hope it stays that way and becomes even stronger and more integral,” Craig said, adding that she might come back as a volunteer one day and expects to use her library card plenty. 'And I pay my fines.”

Elsworth Carman, who most recently served as director of the Marion Public Library, will be the library's new director starting Jan. 2.

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