Coffee With: Jocelyn Kennedy, Executive Director of The Farmington Libraries
On her transition from academic law, how books are chosen, and some library resources you might not know about
By Carl Wiser
Staff Writer
Before taking over as executive director of The Farmington Libraries in September 2023, Jocelyn Kennedy held that position for seven years at the Harvard Law School Library. It was the pinnacle of law librarianship, but after the death of her father in 2022, she was ready to do something different.
"In February of 2023, I did the math and I was like, if I only have 30 years left to live, what do I want to do with it?" says Kennedy. "A month later, a friend from California sent me the job posting for the director of the Farmington Libraries, so I applied and I got the job."
Kennedy grew up in the little town of Dunbarton, New Hampshire, where there were 10 kids in her elementary school class. After earning a degree in English literature at the University of New Hampshire in 1993, she took a job with Congressman Charlie Bass of New Hampshire, working in constituent services to help citizens navigate the federal government. She enjoyed the job, but wasn't sure it would last. Every two years, Bass was up for re-election, and if he lost, she'd be unemployed.
Kennedy became a single mom when her son was born in 1995. While raising him and working for the congressman, she got certified as a paralegal, then went to law school at Franklin Pierce Law Center, starting on her son's first day of kindergarten. There, her career path veered from lawyer to librarian.
"I worked in the library while I was in law school, and all the librarians said, 'You should be a librarian.' I said, 'I'm spending a lot of money to go to law school, why would I become a librarian?'"
Kennedy got her law degree in 2003 and spent two years in the Lakes District of New Hampshire clerking for two judges.
"It was a lot of research and a lot of writing, and I loved it," says Kennedy. "My son was nine, and I thought, who's going to raise this child while I'm practicing law? Especially as a first-year associate, you're talking 80-90 hours a week of work. Kids always need kind, loving adults, but their parents become really important when they're in middle school and high school because that's where things can go sideways, and I didn't want somebody else raising my middle schooler. So I decided that I would apply to library school at the University of Washington because they had a law librarianship program that was 11 months, and they had a graduate position that would enable me to go to school for free if I got that position. I decided to apply for that, and if I get it I will become a librarian and if I don't get it, I will become a lawyer."
She got the position and earned her law librarianship degree in 2006. From there she became a law librarian at the University of Michigan, where she did research for the faculty. In 2011 she moved to Connecticut and became the director of library services at UConn Law School. A year later, she met her soon-to-be husband Seth, and in 2014 they bought a home in Farmington.
"Then in 2016 I got a position at Harvard University at the law school as the director of that law library," says Kennedy. "It's kind of a big job. So my husband and our family moved up to Boston."
Her next stop was The Farmington Libraries, where Kennedy does much of the same work she did in academia, including strategic planning, facilities work, budgeting, hiring, community relations and staff support, but the product and the patrons are very different.
"An academic institution is singularly focused on attracting, recruiting and retaining faculty and students, so your constituency, your patrons, are also singularly focused on their work," she says. "Whereas in a public library, it's really everybody in your community and beyond. We don't just serve the people of Farmington, we serve anybody who comes into our building."
Law libraries are narrowly focused; Kennedy can be a lot more creative in the public space.
"This spring I did a program with Rose Ponte, who is our director of Economic Development here in town, called The Entrepreneurship Journey, where we invited entrepreneurs from the community to talk about their experience starting a business here in town and then growing their business," she said. "I did programming in the academic space very much around law and legal principles, but getting to do something with a really amazing member of our town government and these business leaders in our community was awesome."
Popular Programs
Kennedy says the children's programs are very popular at The Farmington Libraries, with the Tots And Tunes And Tales music and movement class drawing about 80 young children on Friday mornings. Popular adult programs include the Afternoons At The Bijou movie nights, talks on local history, and the annual Kristallnacht program, which explores the Jewish experience in the Holocaust.
Kennedy and her staff are planning a program to teach life skills like basic car maintenance and plumbing. "Things you might not have had the opportunity to learn from an adult, and now you're renting your first apartment or you're buying your first house and you're like, I don't know how to change a faucet."
How Books And Movies Are Chosen
Library staff members look at what patrons are checking out and what's popular when they decide what to add to the collection.
"We have a lot of mystery writers, a lot of suspense writers in our collection because that's what our community reads," says Kennedy. "Colleen Hoover is an example of an author who's incredibly popular right now, so we're going to buy all of her books because they just fly off the shelves. We look at our community and we'll say, okay there's a number of new entrepreneurs, so let's beef up our business section. We're paying attention to what's happening in our community and at the high school for our teen readers. The New York Times bestseller book list is another resource."
As for DVDs, TV series are very popular, everything from The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Game Of Thrones.
The books and DVDs come mostly from big vendors that also sell to bookstores. "We do try to negotiate the prices," says Kennedy. "There are some things we get for less than what you would pay at a bookstore. Sometimes we buy things on Amazon or Barnes And Noble if they're not available from a vendor."
Library Resources
With your library card, you can access Ancestry.com and also explore genealogy in the local history room. "We have an archive of material related to the town of Farmington going back pretty far," says Kennedy. "Grand lists, so you can see who lived here. Maps of neighborhoods and streets - a lot of people come in and trace the history of their house."
There are also job search databases and a resource called Vet Now that helps veterans in their transition out of service and into civilian life. There's even a "library of things" where you can check out a toolkit, a GoPro camera, or a croquet set.
You don't have to live in Farmington to check out materials from the library. It's part of Library Connection Incorporated (LCI), a consortium of 32 libraries in the area that share collections, so an Avon library card can check out a book in Farmington, and vice versa. Canton, Burlington and Simsbury are all part of LCI.
Other Libraries
As you can probably guess, Kennedy enjoys library tourism. "I love every library because every library is unique and has some cool feature," she says. "I was at the New Britain Public Library last week and that building is really interesting because it's two old buildings with a newer building tying them together, and their children's room looks like a church. It has this cathedral ceiling and it's all wood. I lived in West Hartford for a number of years before I moved to Farmington, and their library is amazing. The Avon Library, I love their children's room."
Her favorite from an architectural perspective is in Seattle, where she lived in 2005 when she was at the University of Washington.
"The city of Seattle has a requirement that 1% of the budget for any public project has to go to art, so when they designed and built the Seattle Public Library, they incorporated art into the physical structure of the building," she says. "There's a wooden floor, and carved into the wooden floor it says 'read' in different languages. It has a big community room with these giant sail cloths that tap into the harbor of Seattle. It's a stunningly beautiful library."
Library Builds Community
Farmington's population is about 26,000, but Kennedy says it has a small-town feel.
"When you come into the library, it's like you're stepping into the community center," she says. "You're running into your neighbors and you're meeting new people and you're building those connections. If you're not tapped into the school community, or you're new to town, how do you meet people? We create that opportunity for connection."
"If you're working from home and you need to connect with people, come to the library," she adds. "We have study rooms. We have people that work from home come in and do their conference calls from the library. They check out one of our study rooms and they'll have meetings. It gets them out of the house. They get to see people. We have printers and wi-fi. It's an extension of your home office in lots of ways. And then you have the conversations with our staff or other patrons in the library. Our staff takes great pride in building relationships and meeting people where they are. Our patrons love the library. The folks who have found us come in and they're building community with us and with each other."
Just being around other people has benefits, according to Kennedy.
"If you're introverted, it's hard to meet people in a public space, especially when you're an adult, because we become inhibited. But the library's a space where you're not alone. You may not be interacting verbally with somebody, but you're occupying space with somebody else, and the opportunity is there. If you attend programs, then you can say, hey what did you think of that speaker? You can build friendships that way. Libraries are really powerful places because they provide something for everybody."
"My goal in the time that I'm at Farmington is to get every single resident of our community to have a library card," Kennedy says. "My favorite part of the job is interacting with the community and the staff. Hands down. Our staff is phenomenal. They're interesting and funny and smart and engaged. For me it's all about human interaction."
Kennedy lives in Farmington with her husband, Seth. Her son is now 29, and she has two stepchildren, ages 26 and 23. We met at Bruno's Cafe in Unionville, where we got to know her better with these "Coffee With" questions.
What do you like to do when you're not working?
I'm a big gardener. I spent a lot of my time from April until October in my yard. I have a vegetable garden, a cut-flower garden, shade gardens.
I like to visit our local farms. Last year, I discovered that I had grown a thousand-dollar tomato by the time I factored in all my time, effort and energy. And I thought, I could go to Sub-Edge or Hein Farm and just buy a tomato for two dollars. So I'm growing less vegetables and purchasing more from our local farmers. Farmington has an amazing farm community with so many amazing farm stands to visit.
I craft, so I do needle felting. I create creatures out of wool, and that's really fun. And I read a lot. I read about 125 books a year. That's about two books a week.
What is something you would like to learn?
We have a Maker Space in our library, and there was a person who was making cigar-box guitars. I'm not a musician, but I would like to learn how to make a cigar-box guitar. That's amazing. I'd also like to learn to sing well.
I would like to learn to be as open and joyful as the children who come into our library. The children who use our library have a lot to teach us.
What's a non-work-related talent you have?
I make really great floral arrangements, and I bring them to work. So come by the library and look for the floral arrangements.
What are some of the places you like to go in the area?
The Farmington Land Trust has a ton of properties with trails that are amazing. I like to go to the Hill-Stead Museum and walk around their property and look at the art there. I love the Athenaeum in Hartford.
What restaurants do you like?
I love Naples Pizza. I come to Bruno's, I like The Daily Grind for coffee. Sugo is a great spot for lunch if you like Italian food. Three Amigos, which is over by Highland Park, has great Mexican food.
What wisdom would you give to your younger self?
Don't sweat the small stuff. My younger self worried about a lot of stuff that didn't matter.
When you leave the Farmington Library eventually, what legacy would you like to leave?
I would like people to experience, when they come into the library, that they feel seen and they feel heard. That they see themselves, whatever that looks like, in the library.
Jocelyn's Top 5 Books
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
"I think it was the first chapter book I read. Every year I read it and I get something different out of it."
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
"I read that in 10th grade for English class. We received the book on a Friday and were told to read the first chapter. On Monday morning, the teacher asked us to hand the books back in because a parent had complained about the book. That was my first experience with book banning. I love the book in and of itself, but it also has a lot of impact in some of the work I do in libraries around intellectual freedom."
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
"I particularly love the line where the rabbit says to the old Buckskin horse, 'What is real?' and the horse says, 'Real isn't something you are, it's something you become.' It's not until you're worn down and faded and people forget about you that you really become real, but once you're real, no one can take that from you. That just is such a powerful message."
The House At Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne
"It's the greatest philosophy book I think you'll ever read."
The Stand by Stephen King
"A phenomenal story about humanity and the apocalypse and good and evil and how we all can make choices based on adversity. We have two paths we can choose."
Among her favorite writers, Kennedy names Ian McEwan and V. C. Andrews.
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