Bout with cancer changed path of new Bettendorf library director

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By David Heitz | Saturday, May 3, 2008 12:19 AM CDT | () comments

Larry Fisher/Quad-City Times Steven Nielsen is the new director of the Bettendorf Library. Buy this Photo

For more than two decades, Steven Nielsen has helped libraries move further away from the loud “thunk!” that one used to hear when checking out a library book to a more muted “beep.”

But he’s much more than just a techie.

“So many people think I’m just a technologist,” Nielsen said during an interview in his office at the Bettendorf Library, where he replaced icon Faye Clow as director last month.

Nielsen has spent a great portion of his career working for companies that develop computer software. “We revolutionized libraries,” he said, adding that he has traveled all over the world bringing libraries into the information age.

But he also has mastered other aspects of running an information center.

Before focusing his career on creating software, he worked as associate director of the Joyner Library at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., from 1991 to 1994 and before that he worked in the Merrill Library from 1984 to 1991 at Utah State University, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Nielsen went to work for the Merrill Library in June 1984, when he graduated from Utah State with an accounting degree. He started doing the books and quickly moved to the head of technical services.

“I wrote the book on networking,” he said. “Librarians weren’t technologists, and I was a crossbreed.”

In 1994, a doctor diagnosed Nielsen with melanoma, the most serious form of skin

cancer, and gave him a 2 percent chance of living five years.

“He said, ‘Do whatever you have to do to live as long as you can for your boys,’” Nielsen recalled. “It was the phone call of a lifetime. I was 35. I decided to change my life.”

He began to take his family on cruises and bought a pricey set of golf clubs. About that time, he was offered a job back in Utah at Ameritech Library Services. He had taken the post at East Carolina University in the hopes of opening a new library there, but the funding fell through for the facility.

“I told them, ‘I’m going to be dead in a year,’ ” Nielsen said. “They said, ‘That’s OK.’ ”

So, he accepted the job, which required him to travel the world to manage and train customer support representatives at 11 offices around the globe.

At the time, Nielsen had a tube in his chest as a result of surgeries to have the melanoma removed. “The day they pulled out my chest tube, I flew to London to give a paper,” he recalled.

From there, he took positions at additional software companies, all the while working as a technological globetrotter for librarians, giving speeches and showing people most commonly associated with words printed on paper how to click their way into the future. He estimates that about 500 million people worldwide every day use software created by Dynix, his most recent employer before starting his own company.

He started his own company, Alpha Bay, in 2006 but quickly tired of long days and long commutes. What’s more, he could not forget that even though melanoma can be dormant, it never leaves a person’s body. Of the 100 people in Nielsen’s experimental cancer treatment program, only he — the lone person in the program who did not stop working — survived.

“I decided I want to go back to libraries and be a part of a community,” he said. “I wanted to live in a place where you could go golfing with the city administrator.”

He found that in Bettendorf. “I’m very happy the board took a chance on me,” Nielsen said.

He has been busy getting to know library patrons as well as the library’s staff. As someone who has visited thousands of libraries, he has a distinct perspective on Bettendorf’s. “It’s very modern,” he said, “and their outreach to the community is unbelievable.”

Nielsen noted that the library has 22,000 users — approximately three-fourths of the city’s population. He credits the library staff for that. “They’re wonderful people. They really care about the community.”

In this day and age, librarians are more important than ever, Nielsen said. With the Internet, people have access to almost unlimited information — “almost too much information,” as Nielsen put it. “But when you do a Google search and get back 3.5 million choices, where’s the quality? That’s where the librarian comes in.”

Sara Hartsock, president of the Bettendorf Library Board, said Nielsen was chosen because “he has great technical experience, of course, but he has wonderful people skills, too. I think that combination really impressed us.”

The day Nielsen was interviewed for this story, he took time out to talk to a library patron upset over the library having a book about magic spells in its collection. The conversation ended amicably.

Davenport Library Director LaWanda Roudebush held a reception for Nielsen a couple of weeks ago to welcome him to the area. She said his technological experience will be an asset to other cities in the Prairie Area Library System.

“He will bring something new to the table,” she said. “He has some fresh ideas, and we’re looking forward to working with him.”

David Heitz can be contacted at (563) 383-2202 or dheitz@qctimes.com.

To learn more about Steven Nielsen, turn to Thursday’s Bettendorf News for a Q and A with him.