Archive
Former District Five Employee Heads South Tucson Library
12.17.2007
Former Special Staff Assistant Sol Gomez has not let any grass grow
under his feet since leaving the District Five office in 2003. He has
earned a master’s degree in library science, married, had a daughter,
and risen rapidly through the Pima County Library District ranks to become
manager or the Sam Lena Library in South Tucson.
Sol, who grew up in the Sierra Vista area in Cochise County, left District
Five to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Arizona,
taking advantage of its Knowledge River program. Knowledge River is designed
to help Latinos make their way into library careers. The program is threatened
with federal budget cuts, but Sol is such a believer in it that he is
one of its co-coordinators of student support for the 2007-2008 school
year and is helping in the effort to find new funding for it.
In a year and a half, Sol had his master’s degree in hand and by that time was married to Adelita Grijalva. A month after obtaining his degree, Sol was hired by the library system – then run by the city of Tucson with half its money coming from Pima County – as a temporary/intermittent librarian at the Valencia Branch. After six months primarily doing reference work at Valencia, he was transferred to the Quincy Douglas Branch to be the children’s section librarian.
Sol worked at Quincy Douglas for six months before being named manager of the little Santa Rosa Branch, which at the time was just a computer laboratory but was in the process of adding a modest book collection. Sol oversaw that transition, soaking up more library knowledge along the way.
After eight months at Santa Rosa, Sol was named manager of the Sam Lena
Branch, where he operates a 9,000 square-foot facility with meeting rooms
with two full-time employees and six part-timers. Sam Lena offers several
community programs, including computer classes, story time for youngsters,
baby time for reading to babies and early literacy offerings.
During Sol’s tenure with the library system, it has switched to
making all the books within it available system-wide. If you find that
a book you want is at a branch other than the one you are at, it will
be brought to your branch for you. And recently, it has gone to Sunday
hours at most branches, including at Sam Lena. Sunday hours were made
possible with additional funding now that the library system is fully
funded and operated by the Pima County Library District.
Sol, who has his hands full with a darling year-old daughter, Adelina, finds his library career rewarding and satisfying. His former co-workers on the District Five staff are pleased with his happiness and proud of his success. We're not surprised, we've always known this bright, talented and personable young man is a winner.