Assistant director joins library

A familiar face is back at Gibson Memorial Library. Jordan Foote, who served as programming specialist in 2021, has come back to serve as the assistant director with extra focuses on adult services and technology.

Foote was born and raised in the Afton area, graduating from East Union High School before going on to get his bachelors in marketing at Drake University. He worked at a startup in Des Moines for a bit before heading back to Union County during the COVID pandemic. He took on the newly created programming specialist position, now held by Heather Pingree.

“It was a brand new position at the time. Really enjoyed coming up with the programming, the marketing, etc,” Foote said. “Then I left to kind of pursue my own venture of running my own ecommerce store. Did that for a little bit and then decided to go back to the workforce, and so here I am at the library as an assistant director.”

While Foote may not be new to the library, the assistant director position is.

“This is also kind of a brand new titled position. We’ve had informal assistant directors in the past, but this position is specifically for assistant director and adult services,” Foote said. “Kind of Danielle Dickinson Thaden’s right-hand man, you could say. Overseeing the everyday operations with the staff, of the general library, just because Danielle’s incredibly busy with everything else going on.”

Foote said he’s excited to help with programming and technology at the library.

“I’m going to be the technology go-to person, so helping everybody with technology. And then the adult services side will be developing, planning and executing adult services and programming. That will kind of be in conjunction with Heather as well,” Foote said. “It’s just going to be anything and everything, which is exciting to me. No single day is going to be the same as another.”

Foote wants to encourage people to see everything the library offers.

“I think we’ve been really catching up with the 21st century and really making this a library of things, making this a library that’s attentive to all of the needs and wants of the community,” Foote said. “So many people view a library as just a place to go and check out books, but we’re more than that, and I think we’ve been developing that even more and really trying to provide more than just books to check out.”

While Foote might be focusing on library services outside of books, he still likes to read himself. He said that picking one favorite book is hard, but one he recently read was “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy.

“I really enjoyed it,” Foote said. “Usually I go for fiction that’s a little bit different, a little bit weirder, and I love short stories too.”