New director helps guide Trafford Community Public Library

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Trafford Community Public Library needed a leader.

The small community library had been without a director since September 2019, when previous director Jessica Beichler took a new job as head of the Penn Area Library. With her departure, the Trafford library was staffed entirely by volunteers for almost a year.

The coronavirus pandemic made things even more complicated, and the library closed for several months last year.

Then Adrienne “Adi” Bracken stepped in as the new director in August, bringing much-needed leadership and vision, according to library board President Eva Powell.

“We were without a director for a long time, almost a year, and we were happy to get her,” Powell said.

Bracken and library volunteers worked together to reopen the building.

“We’ve been really lucky,” Bracken said. “We have great volunteers.”

Bracken said she’s spent much of her life in libraries.

“I spent a lot of time in the library as a kid,” she said. “I would, actually, in high school, skip class to go to the library.”

As a student at Seton Hill University, she worked in the college library, which she said inspired her career. She worked at the Zelienople Area Public Library before getting the job in Trafford.

Powell described Bracken as friendly to volunteers and patrons and driven to help the library succeed.

“She was like the heart of the library,” Powell said. “We just went right on.”

Bracken is the library’s sole paid staff member.

She has worked to create new covid-friendly programs, establishing a book club for adults and a story time for kids that are both held through the Zoom videoconferencing platform.

Many people have come to the library during the pandemic, using its computers to fill out unemployment paperwork and search for jobs, Bracken said.

Bracken said her priority is making sure the library’s resources are available to people, both during the pandemic and after its over.

“I just love the idea of being able to serve our community,” she said. “We are open, and we are here, and we’re here to help however we can.”