New library director makes leap to Churchill County

After being introduced to Northern Nevada while attending a professional conference, C.L. Quillen, Churchill County Library’s new director, was hooked on the area.

When the opportunity arose to move to Fallon for the library director’s position, she jumped at the opportunity and has been enjoying getting to know the region better after landing her job.

With family living in California, the New Jersey native made the leap to Churchill County this spring and drove herself across the country to her new home and has thrown herself into the local culture by being a judge for the Cantaloupe Festival King and Queen contest earlier this month and exploring the area including “Fallon’s cute downtown.”

When asked about her reasons for coming to Churchill County, she said: “Our library is such a vibrant part of the community and is one of the only places people can go that doesn’t cost anything, which makes it the perfect community gathering place. The Board of Trustees wants to expand the facility and I wanted to be involved with that.”

A life-long voracious reader, Quillen worked in higher education in the early part of her career before considering a change into either law or libraries. After discovering many of her classmates in her library science graduate school classes were former lawyers, she knew she made the right decision and hasn’t looked back. She has spent 25 years working in libraries, including public libraries, academic libraries, and science libraries.

Prior to coming to Fallon, she worked at libraries in Florida, North Carolina and New Jersey.

As is often the case with folks who like to read, Quillen got into writing and, with a good friend, co-authored a book about romance novels. Her book can be found at the library and features thematic lists of romance novels with descriptions. That turned into an opportunity to write for Booklist, a book-review magazine for libraries, educators, and booksellers.

Her short-term plans for the Churchill County Library include continuing the successful programs that currently exist and bringing more adult programming into the library to make it “what the community wants and needs.” Her ideas include book groups, a cookbook club and adult craft nights. The installation of a new legal kiosk, devoted to legal research, was her first project at the library.

Long-term projects include expanding the library building, expanding maker space programming, adding cooking programs, finishing the catalog migration project, starting an email newsletter, finding grants to add more computers and classes and holding conversations with adults regarding books to read.

“The library staff has a wealth of knowledge and can steer patrons to books they might like. We can find just about any book someone may want via the Nevada Library Cooperative or from out-of-state libraries,” Quillen said.

On the personal side, Quillen reads thrillers and women’s fiction, is fascinated by the idea of mermaids and thoroughly enjoyed her solo cross-county road trip to move here and the stops she made at the Oz Museum in Kansas and Arches National Park in Utah.

Anne McMillin is public information officer for Churchill County.