Alumna Spotlight

Tamara Glise

Alumna recieves Librarian of the Year honors

Tamara GliseFive and one-half hours was all the time Tamara Glise, MA ’90, interim director of the Cedar Rapids Public Library, had to decide what could be saved before the impending flood waters would overtake the city’s historic 85,000 square foot library that occupied a city block.

Staff members worked through the last minutes of the evacuation to save what they could. The unprecedented flood crested on Friday, June 13, after capturing nearly ten square miles of the city’s central business district. In its aftermath, the first floor of the library and more than 160,000 items were lost.

Glise immediately began work on a satellite location, known as the “Bridge Facility,” that consisted of six storefronts at a local mall. The Bridge was later consolidated into a single mall location that symbolically opened on another Friday the 13th in February 2009.

For her efforts to provide continuous library service to the people of Cedar Rapids, Library Journal, one of the oldest and most respected publications covering the library field, recognized Glise and her entire management team with its 2008 Librarian of the Year Award.