New leadership at Multnomah County Library

April 21, 2009- We are pleased to announce that Vailey Oehlke (VAY-lee EL-key) is Multnomah County Library’s newly appointed Library Director. Vailey is forward-looking and energetic and brings a deep understanding of the library's operations, challenges and opportunities.

After working in three other library systems, Vailey has had a rapid ascendance at Multnomah County Library over the last twelve years. She proved her management moxie when she became Director of Central Library in 2004. In 2008, she was appointed Deputy Director of the system, directly managing nearly three quarters of the library's workforce and more than 80% of the library's $60 million budget. A strong participant in national and international library leadership, Vailey keeps her eye on the future. She reads every issue of Harvard Business Review and Fast Company cover to cover, looking for the trends and lessons from other sectors that she can bring to library management. She toured leading-edge European libraries last year to better understand international innovations and trends. And she is currently heading up the local arrangements for an upcoming national conference that will be held in Portland for public libraries from around the country.

Within the library, Vailey is known as a consensus builder and strategic thinker. Having worked her way up in the system, she understands the challenges the library is facing in keeping up with technology and an increasingly diverse workforce and population. With an eye toward managing with limited resources, she has led the way in posing solutions for the challenges that high circulation and usage create for the library's infrastructure. She is vigilant in looking for ways to develop leadership in newer librarians and staff and focuses on out-of-the-box thinking where technology and reaching diverse communities are concerned.

Not to be left behind in going green, Vailey commutes to the library on her Vespa and frequents the Hollywood farmer's market to meet her locally-grown needs. A skier in the winter, kayaker in the summer, and a hiker all year long with her dog Clementine, Vailey likes to get out of the city when she is not working with her partner Andrea on their 1909 northeast Portland home. Those do-it-yourself home repair skills also came in handy when she headed to New Orleans to volunteer with Mercy Corps in their post-Katrina rebuilding effort.

Here at The Library Foundation, we believe Vailey's energy and vision will set a strong direction for the library at a time when the economy, the changing role of technology and our children's education make the library more important than ever.