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Library director retires after 32 years

Concordia faculty member, Sharon Hoverson, will be retiring within the next month. She will be leaving her position as library director after 32 years of service to the Carl B. Ylvisaker Library on campus.

Hoverson, a Concordia grad, has been the Library Director since 2004, overseeing all of the operations at the library. She has worked with everything from budgeting, acquisition of materials and maintenance and facilities management to providing a learning environment for students.

Throughout her years at Concordia, Hoverson and the library staff have worked diligently to keep Carl B. as up-to-date as possible while still keeping the warm, homey feeling the building has offered since 1956. The technological advances within the library setting has demanded a lot from all library personnel and Hoverson has done her best to accommodate for these needs. Hoverson says that they are constantly working on improving the library and, after she retires, such improvements will continue.

Hoverson has decided, though, that it truly is time to retire.

“It’s time for younger people to take over,” she said, “with new ideas and fresh thoughts.”

Photo by Beth Meemken. The library staff looks forward to welcoming a new director.

Hoverson hopes to spend a lot of time at the lake in the summer and to help with a family company when she can after she retires. She also plans to come back to help out around the library–possibly in the archives–so she doesn’t have to leave her home of 32 years all at once.

She said that she will miss her job, her friendships, the students and the Concordia community as a whole once she leaves.

“Concordia’s a great place to work,” she said. “It has a wonderful mission statement and I have enjoyed all my time here very much. It’s kind of an inspiring place.”

Molly Flasphloer, special projects librarian, is one of many who will miss Hoverson’s presence on campus.

“During her time here, she was a strong leader and an effective library director. She leaves Concordia after making very positive marks on both our College Archives and the Library as a whole,” she said.  “We all hope she enjoys a long, happy and well-deserved retirement.”

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Succeeding Hoverson will be Laura Probst, a native Minnesotan who moved back from Miami after serving as the Dean of Libraries and University Librarian at Florida International University since 2007. Probst graduated from Luther College with her bachelor’s degree in music and then earned a master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Illinois as well as a master’s degree in musicology from the University of Minnesota.

Virginia Connell, Chair of Library Instruction and Reference of Carl B. and a member of the search committee for the new Library Director, said that she thinks that Probst will bring a world of experience to the library. Connell mentioned that the library staff is looking forward to this new era in the library’s development.

Connell said that Probst was incredibly excited by her initial tour of campus earlier this year.

“The more she learned about Concordia, the more enthusiastic she became,” Connell said. “She had talked multiple times about wanting to get back to a liberal arts, small-institution kind of environment and you could really see that we were growing on her as time passed.

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