Photo courtesy of Carrie Steinmehl.
Carrie Steinmehl is the new assistant library director for the Hoover Public Library.
The Hoover Public Library hasn’t had an assistant director for about five years, but that recently changed.
The assistant director position was eliminated in 2018 after Assistant Director Patricia Guarino retired. Due to budget constraints, those duties were divided up among library managers, Director Amanda Borden said.
But this spring, with the departure of another full-time employee and several part-time employees, Borden did some rearranging of job duties among multiple staff and was able to bring back the assistant director position without paying out any more money.
She said she has a great team of managers, but she felt it was time to designate someone as a clear No. 2 on the organizational chart and groom a potential successor for herself, she said.
She’s not planning to retire in the “near future,” but it’s not necessarily in the “distant future” either, she said. She could see it happening sometime in the next five to 10 years, she said.
“You don’t know what life holds,” Borden said. “Anything could happen to me at any time. If I were in a car accident today, I would want to clearly have somebody in charge.”
Borden chose Technology Manager Carrie Steinmehl as her right-hand woman.
The staff already was looking to Steinmehl as a leader when Borden was away, she said. “She’s kind of a natural leader.”
Plus, the pair complement one another well, Borden said. Borden said she gets a lot of ideas for new services, but Steinmehl is good at getting it done. She’s very detailed and good at technical things, Borden said. “I knew she would be a great fit for that job.”
When Borden was an assistant director, she was chairwoman for the library’s Southern Voices Festival, and Steinmehl was co-chairwoman. The pair worked well together, Borden said. When Borden was promoted to library director, Steinmehl took over as chairwoman of the festival.
“She’s an excellent project manager. She is devoted to the library,” Borden said. “She accepts responsibility. … I can’t express how passionate she is about the library and books and helping people and being of service to the community.”
Steinmehl started working at the library as an intern 24 years ago, in 1999. She then was hired for a full-time temporary job in July 1999 and in 2000 was made an information systems support specialist. By 2002, she was named head of the technology department and has held that role until now.
As head of technology, Steinmehl not only ran the library’s technology hub, where people go to get assistance with things like sending and receiving documents — or even faxing. She and her team also were responsible for the 40 or so computers throughout the building and maintaining the wireless network used by so many library patrons.
Steinmehl over the years has helped the library get numerous grants from the Alabama Public Library Service, bringing in almost $380,000 in outside money to help advance the library’s technology.
She and her team implemented the radio frequency ID tags that are now on all items in the library’s collection, the self-checkout machines, the sorters that sort books and other items when they are returned, the print management system and — most recently — the remote library kiosk that lets people check out library materials from the East 59 Café in The Village at Lee Branch. She also leads a true crime book club that meets the last Tuesday of each month.
Steinmehl said she’s excited about her new role as assistant director. It had been her goal for several years to move up in terms of responsibility and leadership, she said. In 2020 and 2021, she went through the Leadership Hoover process.
The library has been conducting a space and staffing study to try to increase efficiency, so Borden and Steinmehl still are trying to sort out exactly who will do what going forward. But most likely, Borden will concentrate on new library services, and Steinmehl will focus on building operations, support services and technology, Borden said.
However, another member of the technology staff, Mike Benson, was promoted as the new technology manager.
“I’m excited to do something different,” Steinmehl said.
Steinmehl, 46, has been married to Eric Steinmehl for 23 years. They have two children who attend Hoover High School and have lived in Hoover 13 years.
