Library board to interview lone finalist for director’s job next week

A committee formed by the East Baton Rouge Parish Library Board of Control has selected E. Spencer Watts as the lone finalist to be the next director of the East Baton Rouge Parish Library System, and he will be in Baton Rouge for a series of interviews late next week. Watts, current director for the Mobile Public Library, was selected from a group of five candidates and will make his way to Baton Rouge on Friday, Aug. 17, before a appearing for a public interview the following day, according to library system Assistant Director Mary Stein, who addressed the Baton Rouge Press Club today. “It’s not an automatic guarantee that he will be offered the job, and it’s not a guarantee that he will accept it,” Stein says. The director search hit a snag July 25 when the Metro Council effectively capped the salary between $72,388 and $100,202 by rejecting a request from the library board to increase the pay range to between $104,751 and $145,000. “Some [candidates] did drop,” Stein says of the fallout from the Metro Council vote. Watts was selected as finalist in part for his experience with library construction and budget issues, she says, and because he’s worked in different parts of the country. Stein also gave updates on the construction of the new Main Library branch on Goodwood Boulevard, which is likely to open in late summer of 2013, rather than around Halloween of next year as she had previously expected. —Frederick Holl