Raymond
Neal’s 13 1/2 years experience at JPL has been largely spent managing the Main Library’s Florida
Collection until he became the Murray Hill Branch Manager. Raymond is married
to the lady whom he is happily pictured with, Janice Best, part-time Library
Associate Senior at Olga L. Bradham and Etta L. Brooks Branch (NW) since July
2013. Raymond, as you will see, has a
high appreciation for his Murray Hill employees and his astute supervisors through the years.
Q:
You are experiencing a relatively new position, Branch Manager/Senior Librarian
at MH, after heading the Main Library’s Florida Collection for ten years. What are the differences in managing a unique department at Main
compared to managing a library in a well-established area of Jacksonville?
A:
There are some similarities, but the differences that do exist are vast. For
the better part of a decade, all I really had to do was manage the material in
a single-subject collection and the staff that worked in the area. I did not particularly pay attention to things
in the system that did not directly impact my ability to run my section and be
one of the rotating PICs at Main, so there were a lot of things (particularly
Children and Teen programming) that I had to learn on the fly. Luckily, I had
been a Librarian at Bradham & Brooks (NW) for the first couple of years I
worked for JPL, so circulation and cash handling were not completely foreign
concepts to me. It took me a little time to relearn what I had known in the
early 2000s, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.
Q:
What past experience has helped you the most in morphing to Murray Hill Branch
Manager?
A:
As I mentioned above, being a Librarian at Bradham & Brooks greatly helped
me ease into branch life. What made the transition easier wasn’t really
anything that I knew, but the great staff here at Murray Hill. Most of them had
experience working in branches and some of them stayed at this location during
the “Great Transition of 2012”, so they were a terrific resource for helping me
adjust. I also have had three astute Regional Managers in Erica Brown, Jane
Harris, and Marshelle Berry. They helped me deal with each new type of crisis I
encountered with wise guidance and much patience.
Q:
Each of JPL’s libraries has its own unique customer base; how do you address
those needs at Murray Hill Branch?
A:
Murray Hill is a great location. Since it’s a pretty densely populated
residential area, many of our customers walk here and come in on a daily basis.
There are a number of young families in the area, and they’ve been enjoying
Chiquita Powell’s programming efforts. Our numbers have been steadily rising in
that area since she joined us in November 2012. As with most other locations,
we have a number of job seekers in here regularly. WorkSource comes out
Wednesday afternoons to help those folks on their quests. The sense of neighborhood
is strong in this area. We do feel like
we’re a part of a community and not just a building in a random location in
Jacksonville. With that sort of sense of place in mind, I helped our Friends
group set up a series of programs last fall on the history of Murray Hill. They
worked with the Murray Hill Preservation Association and Metrojacksonville.com
to put together three fantastic programs that everyone in the neighborhood
loved. We had to move the final program to the Murray Hill Theater next door because
we could not fit the 106 people that attended into MH’s meeting room.
Q:
What would you like to see improved at
Murray Hill Branch?
A:
It seems like an odd thing to mention, but our customers really need some
electrical outlets! So many people come to the library these days to use our Wi-Fi.
If they’re here for any length of time, they’ll need to plug in their laptops
and other devices. In addition to those folks, we’re one of the locations that
allow customers to check out laptops. We currently only have two outlets in the
public area, so we put down a multi-outlet power strip at each outlet and now
we have people constantly clustered in these two corners at the front of the
building. I took an idea that former manager Daniel Kibler first proposed
(giving folks more comfortable access by installing a “laptop bar” along the front
of the building), revised it and submitted it for approval as a special
project. It may be in the pipeline for future projects right now.
Q:
Tell us something about yourself most of us would not know.
A:
I’m really not sure what folks would not know about me – I tend to wear most of
my passions on my sleeve. Most people that know me know that I’m interested in
comics and graphic novels, sports (Clemson University, Carolina Panthers, and
New York Yankees) and pop culture. You may not know I was an Art & Art
History major in college. That background really helped me when I was in
Special Collections—techniques from classes in printmaking came in handy for
repairing materials in Special Collections and knowledge from various design
classes helped when I was part of JPL’s digitization project. I may not be a
professional artist, but that educational background has helped me immensely in
the library world.
Shevonica Howell, a local author (right) shared an
excerpt from her book: Girl, they aint ready! Life can be all you want it to
be; trust me! Gloria Buenavista said, "NW has a copy of her book and every time she
comes in to the branch, the book is always checked out."
Kathy Cooley, another local author, read from one of her books; she has authored two, Married to the Confused, Selfish and Heartless Guy
and The Love That Seeped From My Heart. 
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