After finishing college and leaving the U.S. at 21 years of age, Lisa Oldham was barely an adult as she began her career working in various library and educational support services across the globe. She has lived in London, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Russia, worked for a foreign company in South Florida, and already raised a family in New Zealand by the time she was recruited by the New Canaan Library to come back to the states.
“I got contacted about this job and thought, ‘Why not?’ When you’ve moved eleven times, it’s much easier to make a big move when that’s been your normal,” Oldham recalled in what has now been her office for four years. “I’d done this sort of work in New Zealand, and loved it. I knew it was where I was best suited.”
As New Canaan Library executive director since 2013, Oldham is helping to oversee and improve the Library’s various services and events on a day-to-day basis, and is carefully planning for the future. Library leadership is planning for an ambitious rebuilding process, which started years ago with the acquisition of adjacent properties to allow for more space.
Prolific and precocious
Libraries have played a major role in Oldham’s life since childhood. Born and raised in the small town of Rhinebeck, N.Y., she recalled visiting the local Starr Library on a weekly basis with her mother while growing up. “I was an early reader, and a prolific one. Very precocious. I read sort of insatiably.” Rhinebeck’s library was significantly smaller than New Canaan’s, and was even part of a larger building. “There was no way my parents could keep up with the volume of books, so we went to the Library every week to change them and I’d come home with a bag full of new ones.”
When asked about her own favorite personal works, Oldham cited Jane Gardam’s Old Filth, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and the short stories of William Trevor. These titles happened to come up off the top of her head, and a list of favorites could go on forever.
After graduating from Rhinebeck High School, Oldham went to the State University of New York at Albany to major in English. Her first library qualification was at the Wellington College of Education in New Zealand. Although she left to continue working in different parts of the world, she would eventually return to New Zealand to work at the National Library, similar to the Library of Congress. Wherever she has been, though, she has always tried to help in the development of corporate or school libraries.
It was also overseas that Lisa met her husband and New Zealander, Matthew Oldham, another prominent member of the New Canaan community; he sells real estate with Halstead Property. The Oldhams live right off of New Canaan’s border in North Stamford, with their son and daughter both at universities.
Lisa pointed out that the biggest change she’s encountered in her time at New Canaan is the tremendous impact of the fast pace of technological change. However, she was quick to dispel the common held belief that the digital era has forced the library to reinvent its image in any way in order to stay relevant. “It’s something I hear all the time.”
About learning, not books
Even if people are borrowing fewer books across the country, Oldham remarked, “Libraries are not about books. They’re about learning and information. Books are one vehicle.”
She pointed out how the old-fashioned concept of libraries as mere bookstore houses dates back to the Victorian era, when reading rooms in working men’s clubs served as a cheap and easy vehicle for self-education.
Since then, libraries are not just reduced to the book, especially as the facility shifts its focus more to event programming and digital media. So while print may be used less, Oldham points out that attendance for programs and use of other services are going up at the same time.
“We are doing what libraries have always done, which is to understand the community they’re serving and deliver what the community wants,” Oldham said. “We just have a lot more tools to do it.”
“I would say we’re not reinventing ourselves; we’re just providing you with every single format that’s available to consume any content. We’re moving with the times as every other industry is.”
Oldham even feels the current shifts to group-based learning, with workshops and guest speakers, are a return to the roots of a library’s original purpose in places such as the Mouseion at Alexandria in ancient Greece. It was at these public gathering places that people learned by listening to scholars and experts speak.
Need for a new building
With plans for a new $25 million facility in blueprint, the reasoning for the current rebuilding process has more to do with space issues in the current building as opposed to any attempt to change the library’s image.
“The building is letting us down every day,” said Oldham. “It really is our biggest challenge.” Many physical changes have been made to try and maximize the best out of the current space, but Oldham still hears weekly complaints of people not being able to find a quiet corner to sit during a peak hour.
Planning for a new facility reportedly began in 2010, before Oldham was director. Acquired land has included a .19 acre home at 48 South Ave. in January of this year, another property at 56 South Ave. on the corner of South and Maple Street in 2013, and an additional parcel on Maple in 2008.
Buying neighboring properties with the help of the Town was the top priority in order to allow architects to move forward with their plans for building new space. Oldham even said that New Canaan is the last of its peers to have had any renovation done, and the Westport Library has gone onto their third update since New Canaan had its last.
She said that renovated space will benefit the Library by offering more enclosed areas, undisturbed meeting rooms, and far more space for the children’s library. Oldham pointed out that since more families use libraries in general, the children’s library is about one-third the size that it should be. “We turn away two-year olds from story time almost every week. It is tragic. It’s just a space issue.”
Authors and speakers have also turned the Library down in the past due to lack of space.
Events and workspaces
As a new facility will help the balance between offering high turnout events and quiet workspaces, Oldham believes this will benefit all Library visitors who choose to learn in either an individual or social way.
Since the project is still in planning stages, an exact timetable for construction or square footage of the new space could not be given.
When asked if the Library will be temporarily closed or relocated at any point, Oldham said, “If we’re going to do this project, we are going to stay open here throughout.”
She was also asked about whether the facade of the current building looking out on Main Street will be kept. While Oldham said there will definitely be a new one, the status of the current one was unclear. “It’s too early at this stage.”
A primary goal in Oldham’s vision is to have New Canaan be named Library of the Year for the U.S., an award handed out yearly. “I think it is entirely possible. We have the level of talent and the service commitment. What’s failing us is the facility.”
A story about New Canaan Library Executive Director Lisa Oldham. New Canaan Library Executive Director Lisa Oldham.
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