By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
It was in March, during a vacation in Florida, when Leslie Burger decided it was time.
The executive director of the Princeton Public Library, finding herself in a leisurely environment where she could relax and even find time to read a book, realized that she would retire from the job that she has held since the summer of 1999.
At 63, Ms. Burger said this week that she is leaving in January on “my timing.”
“Sixteen years is a nice, long run,” she said Thursday from her office.
News of her retirement broke earlier this week, although Ms. Burger already had told the library board of trustees in April of her decision. She informed her staff on Monday.
She will remain on the job for the next six months, as the library board looks to find a successor. Board president Kiki Jamieson said Wednesday that there would be a national search for a “plum job” that will attract the best applicants. To find those candidates, the board plans to use a firm.
Her decision to leave comes with the library seeking to renovate the building. At the moment, she is in the midst of trying to raise the money for a $2.9 million renovation of the second floor. Whether she can raise all the money in her remaining time is unclear.
She is eyeing a Jan.15 departure date, although that could change.
That Ms. Burger is retiring came as no surprise. She and the board have had conversations about her future for the past few years. Ms. Burger is a veteran librarian, who got her start in the field 42 years ago.
In that time, she has seen a transformation in the way people get their information and how they use their libraries. Of all the changes she has seen in her industry, she said technology had the biggest impact.
Originally from Connecticut, she worked there and at the New Jersey State Library. She came to Princeton in the summer of 1999 as the interim director for what she thought was a short-term assignment.
“Four months turned into 16 years,” she said, adding that she leaves the library in a “much healthier place” than we she took over.
During her tenure, she led the effort to construct a new library building, one that opened in 2004. Today, she oversees 73 to 74 full and part-time employees and manages a budget of around $5.3 million. Last year, her total compensation was $163,505.
“I’m good with everything that I’ve done here,” she said.
She is a past president of the American Library Association. In her office, she keeps photos of her with former first lady Laura Bush and a then-junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.
At the national level, she found herself front and center on issues related to patron privacy involving the Patriot Act and the ability of federal law enforcement to seek records of library users around the country.
“While ALA fully supports the efforts of law enforcement in legitimate investigations, those efforts must be balanced against the right to privacy,” she said in 2007.
Looking to her post-Princeton life, she said that she plans to return working full-time at the consulting company, Library Development Solutions, that she and her husband, Alan, own.
