Ellen G. Detlefsen

Trustee, 2026

My first library memory is a story told to me by my mother about being taken to the Staunton, Virginia, Public Library on my third birthday and finding a library card on my birthday cake. Years later, at the Waynesboro Public Library in Virginia, I remember being upset that kids couldn’t use the adult fiction collection. I broke down that barrier when I was allowed access at the age of eleven through an action of that library’s Board in 1957. It didn’t hurt that my mother was the chair of the Board of Trustees for the Waynesboro library!

I joined the Scarborough Public Library board to try to make the best use of my own forty-seven years in librarianship. Joining the board has also helped me to better connect with my community here in Maine.

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