NEWS RELEASE

The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) elected new officers to serve for FY2018 at its Board Meeting on July 13, 2017.

The Board voted for Commissioner Mary Ann Cluggish to continue as chair for a second year. Commissioner Cluggish was appointed to the Board in 2011 and reappointed in 2014. She served as a trustee of the Wellesley Free Library for twelve years and is currently a member of the library's Friends group. She currently sits on the MBLC’s Construction Team, Legislative Committee, Public Relations Advisory Committee, and State Aid to Public Libraries Committee.

Professionally, Chair Cluggish worked nationally and internationally as a sales and marketing consultant to high technology companies. She was successful in garnering community support for the library building project in her hometown of Wellesley which resulted in the new $14 million main library there. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Indiana University and conducted her postgraduate work at Boston College in the Women and Government Program.

Commissioner Roland Oschenbein, who served as Board Secretary last year, will take on the role of Vice Chair. He has served the MBLC as a member of the State Advisory Committee on Libraries, as a construction grant reviewer, and as a member of the search committee for the new MBLC Director. He is currently the Board’s liaison for the Commonwealth eBook Collection Steering Committee. He was appointed to the Board in 2014 and has been an advocate for libraries on the local, state, and national levels for many years. He has served as a library trustee, chair of the building planning committee, and co-chair of the construction committee for the Bolton Public Library.

Professionally, he has worked as an executive and consultant in the educational, professional, and reference publishing fields for more than 30 years. He has been involved in the development and launch of several notable projects that are in widespread use in public, school, and academic libraries around the country, among them the first electronic reference product to be awarded the American Library Association's prestigious Dartmouth Medal (Pop Culture Universe, 2009). Ochsenbein is a graduate of Bucknell University.

The Board elected Commissioner Mary Kronholm as Secretary. She was appointed to the Board in 2011, and reappointed in 2016. She serves on the Public Relations Advisory Committee and State Aid to Public Libraries Committee.

Commissioner Kronholm is an active advocate for libraries. She was a founding member of what is now known as the Western Massachusetts Library Advocates and was an Executive Board Member of the Western Massachusetts Regional Library System. She is currently a library trustee at Porter Memorial Library in Blandford and continues writing as a professional journalist. As president of the Massachusetts Library Trustee Association, she has addressed the Legislature Ways and Means Committees as well as gatherings of library advocates from North Adams to Boston on a variety of library issues.

The Chair, Vice Chair and Secretary make up the Executive Committee of the MBLC, and are elected every July by the board and hold their office for one year. Commissioners are allowed to serve for two successive one year terms in any office, and after one year are eligible for election again.

Established in 1890, the MBLC was the first state library commission in the United States. The nine-member, volunteer Commission is appointed by the Governor. The MBLC supports statewide programming and innovation in libraries to ensure equal access to library services for every resident in the Commonwealth.