After nearly two years of infighting among residents, library supporters and local leadership, the Bradford County Commissioners announced the county library’s new director on June 26.
Texas native Brandy Kreisler was hired on June 2 and voted in by commissioners during their regular meeting Thursday morning.
Kreisler, a former Cornell Law School librarian, has moved from paralegal work, to online higher education, to working as a caseworker for Chemung County, New York’s children and family services department.
But she says libraries are her “first, initial and biggest love.”
“I was very blessed and thrilled to find this position open and advertised here. I am very lucky,” she said at her office at the Bradford County Library (BCL) in Troy. Stacks of children's books and games encircle her desk, which is filled with plans for her vision of the library to come.
Making the Bradford County Library a ‘destination library’
The Bradford County Library has had a rocky two years, ever since news leaked online that county commissioners held a secret meeting on Aug. 24, 2023 to close down the library.
Residents fought tooth and nail alongside the Friends of the Bradford County Library, a citizens group which financially supports BCL, to keep the library open.
In November 2024, county commissioners fired Interim Director Rebecca Troup-Hodgdon for “personnel reasons,” according to county staff. She was never officially hired as the library’s director despite holding the position since August 2023. Fiscal Director Alan Roloson served as acting director before Kreisler was hired for the position.
Commissioners voted in December to cut the library’s funding by 30% for 2025, a smaller loss compared to the original 50% proposed cut. The library’s funding shrunk from $471,106 to $328,666. That represents 0.46% — less than half of 1% — of the county’s $71.9 million budget.
He restated his hope to hire a “forward-thinking” director who would get Martha Lloyd Community Services, a community center for people with intellectual disabilities and autism, involved with the library. Other organizations could be brought in as well, and he added that the library needed to make big changes or risk closure.
“Maybe that's the best thing, to close it, clean it out, and then retool it and open it back up again as a destination library,” McLinko said in March.
The future of the Bradford County Library
While Kreisler doesn’t use terms like ‘destination library’ to talk about BCL’s future, she does have plans for how she hopes the library will grow to meet community needs.
She said she wants to develop a strategic plan that will assess what services library visitors are using and what programs the community wants to see going forward. That plan will review the library’s physical collection of 42,000 materials, its e-book collection and more.
Kreisler assured that these changes do not mean “anything alarming” about the library’s physical collection, which has been at risk of losing thousands of books in the past.
“What [a review of our collection] means is we're going to take a deep dive and assess it. We need to understand what we have, what circulates, what people want in the future, and what what our patrons actually end up using for their own busy lives,” Kreisler said. “Because as a library, we are responsible for meeting them where they live, rather than expecting them to … fit themselves into our ideas [of what a community should want]. And it means doing a lot of research.”
She said she plans to work with the county’s eight smaller libraries and get their advice and recommendations on how to make BCL and Bradford County’s libraries stronger.
“Most of the things that we've thought about, other libraries have already tried. Maybe they've worked, and maybe they haven't, but I need to communicate with other folks,” Kreisler said.
Kreisler will take the next three months to get a temperature of the community’s needs and then develop her strategic plan, which she plans will lay out ideas for BCL’s future over the next year.
New director, new Bradford County Library
The Bradford County Library already is planning some big changes since Kreisler started in early June.
Every Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. the library will host programs dedicated to reaching different audiences in the community (see more below).
Kreisler hopes the events will attract community members from different audiences to the library.
“We have a lot of populations here [in Bradford County.] Some of them may not feel that the library yet has something to offer [them]. And we want to show them … there are things here that [are] specific to your interest, your focus. So, these programs on Thursdays, I want [them] to have a wide variety,” Kreisler said.
Roloson noted that the new program would extend the library’s hours from 47 to 49 a week.
Kreisler also plans to bring in local authors from throughout Pennsylvania to speak at the library and to put up plaques around the library to commemorate local history.
The Bradford County Library is looking for public input on what the community wants to see for the library’s future. To share your opinion, visit their survey from the Office of Commonwealth Libraries.
For more information on upcoming library events, visit the Bradford County Library’s Facebook.
Thursday evenings at BCL
Thursday evenings at the Bradford County Library will be chock full of events through the end of July:
• July 3: Summer reading of “Arlo Draws an Octopus” for the little ones.
• July 10: The Bradford County Conservation District will give a presentation titled “Libraries Love Lakes” on how people can get involved in taking care of the environment.
• July 17: Historian Kenneth Serfass will share the history of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th U.S. President and Commanding General of the Union Army. Serfass is a retired U.S. Marine who brings Grant to life as a “first-person impressionist.”
• July 24: Dr. Bob Hansen will present the history of chocolate and a tasting. He has sourced chocolate from various countries like Ecuador, Mexico and Belize. Hansen will talk about agriculture, forestry and how cacao is produced and sourced from farm to table, according to Kriesler.
• July 31: Nautical-themed movie night in keeping with the children’s book of the month: “Arlo Draws an Octopus.”
