Jake Barillaro, the newly appointed Mohave County Librarian, has three master’s degrees and has been quite a world traveler, visiting 37 nations on five continents.
Barillaro grew up in Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Hawaii and California. He had blue collar worker dreams as a kid and took community college vocational classes to become a diesel mechanic, like his father. But he didn’t stop there, earning a BA in History at Cal State, San Bernardino, and eventually master’s degrees in Education, International Studies, and Library and Information Science.
From 2011-17, Barillaro worked in the Riverside County Library System in Temecula as an adult services coordinator, then circulation supervisor. He became branch manager of the Mission Trail Library in Wildomar, California in 2013; branch manager of Cesar E. Chavez Perris Library and Western County Bookmobile in 2014; and, in 2016, Desert Zone manager in Riverside County in charge of 10 libraries, a bookmobile and a museum in the Coachella Valley. This vast experience has paid off for both Barillaro and county residents since he arrived Feb. 7.
Barillaro says “information” is so vitally important today, adding “never before has so much information been available to so many people, so quickly.” He said he believes “digital” information is rapidly expanding, saying “our digital collection is growing. We’re not going to get rid of paper-based stuff, but the proportion of the entire digital collection is going to have to grow. We have to be there when people will be asking for it and not falling behind the curve.”
Barillaro and his wife have a daughter born in 2015. Her library world may be quite different with its array of changing technology. Despite the need for the ever-changing multiple digital collection, Barillaro does emphasize that the “paper” book is still viable and useful to many. “Books are never going away,” he said.
Original source can be found here.
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