NEWFANE — Louise Sirois knows she has big shoes to fill as the new librarian at Moore Free Library, but she's ready for the challenge.
Sirois said she grew up in northern Maine, “where any trip to town was special,” and she especially liked going to the library.
“I was one of eight children,” she said. “Just being alone with books, and not having to share, was magical.”
Her educational background is in languages and education. She has a B.A. in French and Spanish from Assumption College, and a M.Ed. in bilingual education from the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
Professionally, she taught English as a Second Language courses for the Quebec Ministry of Education and was a business manager for a feed company before she spent nearly 11 years as library manager for a branch of the Cochise County Library District in Arizona.
She said the library where she worked, not far from Tucson, was a lot like the Moore library in that it was small and served a mostly rural community.
Sirois is looking forward to building upon the tradition of outgoing librarian Meris Morrison and Morrison's predecessor, Cynthia Nau.
Moore has a particularly strong children's and young adult book collection, an equally strong Vermont history and nonfiction section, and a sizable inventory of DVDs.
“A good library is the center of a community,” Sirois said. “It responds to the different needs of different people. My philosophy for running a library has always been, 'What can we do for you?'”