Alan Engelbert, director of the Kanawha County Public Library System, in November after the announcement of a $27 million renovation plan for the library’s main branch in Charleston. Engelbert announced Monday that he will retire in July, after more than a decade at the helm of the Kanawha library system. Photo by Kenny Kemp | Gazette-Mail file photo.
Posted: Jan. 22, 2018 | Source: WV Gazette-Mail
The director of the Kanawha County Public Library System announced today that he will retire in July.
In a news release, Alan Engelbert said, “I have greatly enjoyed my time at the library and in West Virginia and I have nothing but fond memories of more than a decade as director at Kanawha County Public Library.
“That so much has been accomplished over the years is a tribute to the commitment of the staff, board and volunteers who make KCPL the excellent library that it is, and it is because of them the future of the library is very bright,” Engelbert said.
In November, library officials announced plans for a $27 million renovation of the system’s main branch on Capitol Street in Charleston, the latest in a series of attempted relocations or renovations of the main library.
Engelbert was chosen as the Kanawha library system’s director in 2007, after a nationwide search. Before he came to Charleston, he was head of the public library system in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
Toni Blessing, the library system’s assistant director, announced last fall that she will retire Friday.
Engelbert’s tenure was marked by a major funding fight with the Kanawha County school system. The Kanawha library system lost about 40 percent of its budget when the county school system said it would no longer provide funding for the library. For a decade, Kanawha school officials had argued that a 1957 law requiring the school system to fund the library was unfair. Then-Kanawha Circuit Judge Paul Zakaib Jr. agreed with the school system in 2011, and the West Virginia Supreme Court upheld the decision in 2013.
Library officials cut back operating hours, stopped hiring new employees, canceled the annual West Virginia Book Festival and warned of branch closures and layoffs. Kanawha voters rejected a levy later in 2013 that would have provided money to both schools and libraries, but they approved a libraries-only levy in 2014 to replace the funding.
More recently, the floods of June 2016 destroyed the library’s Clendenin branch and cut off access to the Elk Valley branch, which is in the Crossings Mall shopping center. Library officials opened a temporary Elk Valley branch a month after the flood and kept it open for a year, until access to the Crossings Mall was restored.
Last fall, library officials mused about the possibility of not reopening a Clendenin branch, prompting Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper to threaten to cut off the county’s funding for the library. Library officials said in December they were proceeding with plans for a temporary Clendenin branch.
