LeRoy Harris will become director of the Cortez Public Library, city officials announced Thursday after a competitive process narrowed the field to three finalists.
Harris, who plans to start in mid-February, brings local ties and broad professional experience to the position. His background includes partnerships with schools, cities and tribal leaders. He emphasizes collaboration as key to success.
He pointed to family ties in the Four Corners during a recent public meet-and-greet with the director finalists. Harris described the Cortez area as home, saying the job appealed because it felt like a return rather than relocation.
“This is home,” he said at the candidate forum Dec. 10. “Libraries bring access to the world, to people. It’s a learning place, a discovering place, a place where you can enjoy new things that you love.”
Harris was selected after former director Beth Edson’s departure, who returned to her hometown Columbia, Missouri, for family reasons.
The hiring process involved recruiting firm Columbia Ltd. and more than 30 applicants initially, which were narrowed to three. City officials incorporated public and staff feedback from the City Hall forum and additional interviews afterward with the hiring panel.
Harris will officially begin his role Feb. 17, according to a city news release.
Harris brings 11 years of experience as a librarian and was previously branch manager and assistant director for Apache County Library District in Arizona. As branch manager and assistant manager, he served nine different rural and diverse communities, including two on the Navajo Nation land.
“He is familiar with the Four Corners region, having previously taught high school in Shiprock, and his dedication to serving diverse communities makes him well prepared to guide the Cortez Public Library into the future,” the city’s news release stated.
Most recently, he was programming and technology services librarian at New Ulm Public Library in Minnesota since March 2020. While there, he represented the library through TV, radio, newspapers and YouTube. He said one virtual author talk went unexpectedly viral and reached 70,000 viewers from as far away as Vietnam.
The city noted his ability to secure a $250,000 Mellon Foundation grant for the library’s memory lab and to expand services, as well as how Harris launched the Emergency Preparedness Fair, which grew from 15 attendees in 2020 to more than 700 in 2025.
At the public forum, he highlighted running more than 30 monthly programs, including poetry, genealogy, chess club and digital literacy, and his work with the memory lab.
“Helping people get confident to the point where their daughter drives 500 miles to say thank you because they didn’t think their mom could do it,” Harris said, was a particularly rewarding and heartwarming experience.
Correction: This article incorrectly stated aspects of LeRoy Harris’ job experience and has since been updated to reflect it accurately.
