Library Director

The head of the public library of Billerica, called Librarian under the Bennett Public Library Association and Library Director since the town library opened in 1980. Billerica's first "Social Library" was instituted in 1772 and a second social library was incorporated in 1807. According to Hazen (1883) the two collections, belonging to the First Parish and to a Ladies' Sewing Society, were long kept together in a room of the First Church in the care of Miss Sarah Annable, who reported seven hundred volumes in 1876, and they passed to the new library in 1880.

In 1880 Mrs. Joshua (Eleanor) Bennett founded the Bennett Public Library. She paid for the Gothic brick building just north of the First Church and deeded it to the Bennett Public Library Association, a private corporation formed to run it. Her daughters Mrs. Holden and Mrs. Warren gave $2000 for furnishings and books, William W. Warren gave the reading-room mantel, Joshua Holden the rose window, and William H. Osborn of New York the lot. Members paid a fee, and borrowing without membership cost one dollar a year (Hazen). The library remained the Association's property. The town paid it the income of the Winthrop Faulkner library fund and, from about 1918, an annual appropriation, and the librarian was appointed by the Association's board of directors. The Association opened a branch at Pinehurst in September 1937 (moved in 1950 to the library wing of the Ditson School) and a North Billerica branch early in 1951 in Father Mathew Hall on Lowell Street, closed in 1955. A separate Talbot Library at North Billerica, founded in 1880 by the Talbot mills for their employees, had closed by 1943 and its books went to the Bennett library.

After a decade of work by a Library Building Committee created by the 1969 town meeting, the town built a municipal Billerica Public Library at 25 Concord Road. On April 19, 1980 a human chain of volunteers moved the Bennett collection into it, the staff became town employees, and the library came under a town Library Trustee. In May 2000 the library moved to 15 Concord Road, the renovated and enlarged 1895 Town Hall. The Bennett building, still owned by the Association, is now a function hall, and the 25 Concord Road building houses the Council on Aging.

Librarians before 1923 are poorly recorded, since the Association did not report to the town; the town reports name only Emma W. Whitford (1910). Mrs. Mary A. B. Snell (Mrs. O. A. Snell) was librarian for 21 years until her death on January 7, 1945. Alice May (Carden) Harriman, who had worked at the library for about thirty years, was librarian from 1945 until her death on January 17, 1955. Mildred Dodd (Mrs. Frank B. Dodd) was appointed in 1955 and retired at the end of 1970. Mary Hadley was hired on trial in January 1971 and made permanent librarian on July 1, 1971. Barbara Allen, later Barbara A. Flaherty, was the first Library Director of the town library from 1980 and retired in 2011 after 31 years. Greg McLay was acting director in 2011. Elizabeth (Liz) Vezina became director effective December 31, 2011 and retired in June 2016. Janet (Jan) Hagman, head of youth services, was named interim director and then appointed director on June 27, 2016, and retired November 12, 2021. Joseph (Joe) St. Germain, the assistant director, was appointed director by Town Manager John Curran on October 25, 2021.

Sources: Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), pp. 315-316; Billerica annual town reports 1892-2025 (Bennett Public Library Association and library reports, memorials, officer lists); billericalibrary.org history page.