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Susan Babb came to the Northeast Massachusetts Regional Library System (NMRLS) in January 1999. She is one of two consultant / trainers. Her focus is primarily Youth Services. With her colleagues across the state, she oversees the  Statewide Summer Reading Program as well as other reading related programs such as the ReadsinMa.org online reading program. More regionally, she provides continuing education opportunities to meet the many different needs of public and school librarians. Several of these workshops have become traditions: Program Power Breakfast, Meet the Author, MSLA/NMRLS Discussion series. Included in these opportunities is the Youth Services Book Review Group which meets monthly and has at any one time a dozen reviewers, including teens. She assists her NMRLS colleagues in facilitating long range planning with the public libraries and works closely with school library teachers in developing their own long range plans. She serves as a staff liaison on the Reference, Supplementary Deposit Collection, and Youth Services committees and manages the web pages for these services. On a monthly basis, she gathers and edits the content for the NMRLS newsletter.
The idea of becoming a librarian occurred to Susan sometime around 1977. She was living in Cambridge at the time and thought a career either in a library or museum might be worth checking into. Getting accepted into Simmons and getting a fulltime job at Cambridge Public Library clinched it. The next three years was a blur of going to school part time and working full time. At Cambridge, one of her bosses was none other than Carolyn Noah, now Regional Administrator at the Central Region!
Susan's first professional job was as a school librarian in New Hampshire, serving a K -12 student population. One year of that was plenty (she respects school librarians a lot!). She moved to Maine in 1982 to become Belfast's first children's librarian. She held that position for 10 years, moving up to Assistant Director and Acting Director. In 1992, she went south to Wells, becoming Children's Librarian and Assistant Director. She also held a short term as Acting Director there. Susan got married during this time. Moving further south, Susan became Head of Children's Services at the Stevens Memorial Library in North Andover in 1996.
Some background: Susan was born in Maine but moved to Washington D.C. where her family lived for almost 10 years. The family lived in Paris, France, for a couple of years and then moved back to Maine.
She attended Clark University in Worcester and Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, NH, each for two years.
Little known facts: Susan was a puppeteer and storyteller for 10 years with OutofHand Productions, travelling the state of Maine from Scarborough to Calais. She curled for two years while living in Belfast, Maine. (What is curling? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curling) Currently, her biggest passion is weaving and learning all there is to know about this craft. She has finished the Harry Potter series and also loves reading about dogs (specifically border collies), adventures, teen lit, and pretty much anything else. She and her husband of almost 13 years work hard on both a vegetable and flower garden. Travel has also become an interest. She and her husband have already made two trips to Mexico and look forward to Rome, Italy next spring.
What's the most fun about working at NMRLS? All the librarians, of course! One of Susan's favorite things to do is to visit as many libraries as possible in the summer, taking pictures and talking with everyone. This past summer she visited 34 libraries! A good week has several site visits and trainings set up throughout the Region, connecting librarians to information and to each other. What's fun is the challenge of no day being the same.
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