Interview: A Conversation with the Incoming Vermont State Librarian Cathy Delneo

Next month, Vermont will welcome a new state librarian. Chittenden County native Cathy Delneo comes to the role with more than 25 years of experience in libraries, most recently as the chief of branches for the San Francisco Public Library.

On how she decided to make her career in the world of libraries:

Cathy Delneo: I went to college and got an undergraduate degree as a philosophy major, and I kind of realized my senior year that I didn’t really know what to do next. Like, where would I go from there?

And I thought about my life, and I thought, what did I enjoy doing the most? And I really just had kind of a flood of memories of all of the different library spaces I had been in, and how I really enjoyed that environment. If it was the public library — I used to use the Howe Library [at the University of Vermont] a lot when I was in high school — so college libraries, elementary school libraries, I just always found myself gravitating to libraries. And so I explored different programs, and I decided to go to the Rutgers University Library and Information Science program. And so that’s sort of how I got into libraries to begin with.

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