Berkeley County Library System Welcomes New Director Gene Brunson
We are excited to say that after a nationwide search, the next director for BCLS is one of our own. Please join us in welcoming Gene Brunson as the new director of BCLS. Gene has served BCLS as
Gene Brunson, BCLS Library Director
the Technology Director for more than 22 years. His extensive background in the library industry started when he was a freshman at the College of Charleston working as an intern for Charleston County Library where he worked for the next four years in various departments of the library and served as a regional manager for Charleston County Library System under his mentor, Cynthia Hurd, one of the Emanuel AME victims.
He has also worked in the school library at MUSC and in the medical library at USC School of Medicine while he earned his Masters of Library Science and Information from USC. In his introduction to County Council members on Jan. 9th, BCLS board chair Patricia Richards explained the unanimous vote for Brunson.“Gene was a fabulous fit for the position as director because … he not only handled all the technology but he touched virtually every aspect of the library,” Richards said.
From cataloging, to shelving, to reference, and working on the bookmobile, he has done it all. Under his leadership, BCLS will continue to move forward, setting the standards for the “library of tomorrow.” When Brunson took office in January he wasted no time assessing the critical needs of BCLS, which included meeting with department heads of county administration. He also began looking for new opportunities to expand and add library services to new and vastly growing communities. In his first meeting with BCLS’s leadership team, which consist of all the library branch managers and department heads, he asked each of them to describe their idea of their “library of tomorrow.”
Leadership members took turns writing down their thoughts and then placed them into a box. Brunson then gathered the box and ceremoniously “threw” the box out the door, thus encouraging his team to work together and to think “outside the box” or realize “there is no box” at all. The ideas generated by this exercise will be revisited as a team, with all BCLS staff members, other library systems statewide and throughout the nation, as well as with community members and county administration in an effort to take the BCLS and Berkeley County to the next level of library services.
