Brain Science tells us that you need to “use it or lose it”. Lately, between retirements and re-organization the State Library is providing plenty of opportunities for brain development to two long time employees. First, Carolyn Petersen is transitioning back to her roots.

Carolyn Petersen

Martha Shinners the long time Youth Services Consultant for the Washington State Library, retired at the end of May and Carolyn has happily stepped up to the plate to fill the very large hole left by Martha. As our Youth Services Consultant, Carolyn will be returning to her roots in Youth Services, only this time for Library Development at the Washington State Library.  This won’t be a huge departure.  Carolyn spent the first ten years of her professional life as a children’s librarian.  Early in her career she chaired the CAYAS interest group, the CAYAS institute and became a founding committee member of the Washington State Children’s Picture Book Award.

Carolyn has kept abreast of trends in Youth Services even as she strengthened her skills in other areas of librarianship.  When she joined Library Development she assisted Martha Shinners by carrying What’s the Big Idea?, a math and science readiness program, out to tribal and rural libraries.  In the immediate future Carolyn will be implementing the third year of the Teacher-Librarian Common Core Cadre (TLC3) with the support of the TLC3 advisory committee.

As Carolyn was already one of the busiest and hardest working members of the Library Development team obviously something had to give. Thankfully another long time WSL employee, Shirley Lewis, has joined the Library Development Team as an Assistant Program Manager.

Shirley Lewis

Shirley began work at the Washington State Library in 1988 as a consultant in Library Planning and Development. She went on to serve in the Washington/Northwest Room, as a Northwest collection specialist, then as Head of Acquisitions, and, most recently, Head of Technical Services.  In addition to her Assistant Program Manager duties, Shirley will work as a project manager developing and implementing statewide projects. She will transition into the role of one of Library Development’s consultants and take on greater responsibility for public library consulting, trustee orientation and similar work over time as Carolyn moves away from that role and into her new role as Youth Services Consultant.

We are very happy to have two such experienced and hardworking people to serve the libraries and citizens of Washington State.