When Dave Sheppard helped out in the Warren (IL) High School library as a teenager, he didn’t know he would one day live in a library. However, on Saturday, Sheppard will be introduced to the community as the new librarian at Oneida’s (IL) Greig Memorial Library, and the first male in a lengthening list of live-in librarians.
Local taxes and other funding add up to a small library budget, so the library board’s solution continues to be an offer of living quarters plus a small salary.
Sheppard, who also works full time at Walmart, and his wife, Lois, will move into the library sometime after the holidays. A Gerlaw native, Sheppard and his wife have lived all over the Midwest, but currently live in his parents’ former home, a 130-year-old house in Gerlaw. They previously owned a paperback exchange bookstore in Monmouth which was behind the Warren County Public Library.
As he provided a tour of the six rooms on the upper level of Greig Memorial Library on Wednesday, Sheppard seemed comfortable with the concept of living in a library, an option that had not occurred to him before his response to the ad for his new position.
librarians living in the library
The author of the linked article isn’t aware of other cases of librarians living in the library.
Emma Engle turned rooms in her home into a space for the E Greenwich library and shared the space from 1962 -1997.
http://www.gcls.org/Libraries/East_Greenwich_Branch/eghist.php
Emma passed away in 2004. She was amazing.
Please read again
Cut-and pasted from the article in question:
“However, on Saturday, Sheppard will be introduced to the community as the new librarian at Oneida’s (IL) Greig Memorial Library, and the first male in a lengthening list of live-in librarians.” The two words “lengthening list” certainly implies that the author is indeed aware that Sheppard isn’t the first live-in librarian.