By Miles Layton

Anna Louise Kallas officially started Monday as regional director of Pettigrew Regional Library, stepping into a role she says she never expected to hold — and one she is already using to lay out an ambitious rebuild of the region’s four libraries.

Ask Kallas why she is taking on the added weight of a regional office less than a year into her library career after starting work at Shepard Pruden Library in Edenton, and the answer she returns to first is not budgets, building bigger collections or staffing. It’s faith.

“I really honestly do believe I am serving God’s will,” Kallas said. “I firmly believe that God has put me on the path that I am intended to be on. While at times I don’t feel I am a leader, I am a leader, and I know that I have the confidence, I know I have the education and the network built to be successful as regional director. And my hope is that we make this region, these libraries, stronger and better. And I can only do that based on what I feel and I know. God’s put me on this path for a reason. I don’t know what it is yet, but I have no doubt that things will change, and they will change for the better.”

Kallas traces that conviction back to her own history with libraries — as a place of refuge growing up, and later as the foundation of a career she says has become a calling rather than a job.

“I think ultimately for me it’s personal,” she said, describing what drives her. “I am a firm believer in living a Christian life, and part of that is giving back in your talents and your resources. And that’s why I feel as director I am on the right path. Public libraries are all about meeting people where they need to be met, regardless of economic or education status… I think that is my drive, ultimately — that if I can help one person be a better person, if I can help them be more successful in this difficult life that we all lead, then you’ve achieved your goal.”

Subscribe — it’s free!

A Region With Strengths — and a Clear To-Do List

Kallas said she isn’t approaching the region as a blank slate. She points to the staff already in place as one of its biggest assets, but she has also identified, in specific terms, where she believes the system has fallen short and needs rebuilding.

“I think right now we’ve got three exceptional librarians,” she said. “They’re all wonderful librarians with impressive staff. I think those are the strong points right now with region — that the staff is amazing across region.”

The list of what needs to change, by contrast, is longer, and Kallas rattled it off without hesitation: building safety and maintenance, community relations, staff training, collection diversity, and consistent policies and communication across all four counties.

“I think the areas that we need to firm up is building maintenance,” she said. “Safety is an issue in the buildings first and foremost, not only for their staff, but for the public. So I think that’s an area we need to strengthen. We need to strengthen again community relations across region. That’s important not only for the public to know us, but also from a networking perspective… there is strength in numbers when it comes to budgets, when it comes to resources, when it comes to grants and proposals. Anything we can do to collaborate within those communities is another area that I feel needs to be strengthened.”

She has already scheduled a librarians’ meeting at the end of August to begin that work directly, and said she plans quarterly building walkthroughs in every county, modeled on the practice she started in Chowan County.

Training is another piece of the reform Kallas is building from scratch. She wants every staff member across the region certified in first aid, CPR, Narcan and AED use, along with active-shooter response — none of which, she said, currently exists systemwide.

“These again are essential skills,” she said. “We work with the public. It’s a matter of life and death when it comes to those skills, and no one in region has done any of that. So that is a priority for me.”

She is also pushing to diversify the region’s collections, acknowledging that funding limits what can be done quickly but pointing to community partnerships — like a relationship she built with the local DAR chapter that donated books to Shepard-Pruden — as a model other branches can replicate.

Kallas said her first six months as director will center on relationship-building across the region — showing up at commissioners’ meetings, board meetings, trustee meetings and Friends of the Library gatherings in each county, and pushing every branch librarian to do the same.

“If you don’t know your community, you don’t know how to service them, you don’t know what the needs are,” she said. “That is something that I will stress in interviews as director. This is an essential part of the job. It’s crucial for all the librarians in this region to be able to be out in the community, and, again, learn your community. The community knows you.”

Tyrrell County: Rebuilding a Relationship

Kallas placed particular emphasis on Tyrrell County, where friction with the previous administration has left some residents frustrated and, by her account, unheard — and where she sees some of the clearest need for reform in how the region communicates.

“Tyrrell is an indispensable part of the region. I would hate to lose Tyrrell,” she said. “They provide resources in that part of the Albemarle area that is unheard of in the rest of region.”

Her first move as director, she said, was reaching out directly to Tyrrell County parties the same morning she took the reins.

“I’ve reached out to the parties, I’ve introduced myself as the new regional director, apologized that that was not made known to them via emails over the last month, and asked to schedule a meeting and address their concerns,” Kallas said. “I think, first, they should know who I am, and they should know there’s a new sheriff in town, and they should know that change is coming.”

She acknowledged some requests for information had fallen through the cracks under prior leadership and said fixing that breakdown, permanently, is one of her top priorities as director.

“Unfortunately, things slipped through the cracks with my predecessor, and there are proper policies and procedures that should be followed,” she said. “This is why it’s important to schedule an introductory meeting, because these issues can be addressed — in the right way, the correct way, the legal way — so that all parties hopefully reach a mutual understanding. It is important to be transparent. Communication is the key here, honestly.”

On the library’s collection and programming in Tyrrell, Kallas pointed to the branch’s large homeschooling population as a natural focus for reform. “I think how we build the connection is through education. We find out the needs of the homeschool group there, and we find out how we can support them in our collection and our programs,” she said.

Edenton: “Near and Dear to My Heart”

Kallas said leaving day-to-day leadership of the Shepard-Pruden Memorial Library, even gradually, is the hardest part of the promotion — in part because so much of what she considers her rebuilding work there is still in progress.

“Edenton is near and dear to my heart. Chowan County, and Shepard-Pruden are near and dear to my heart,” she said. “When I moved here eight months ago, I always thought I would be an outsider in a small town. And this community has done nothing but embrace me with love and support and given me the confidence I think I’ve needed here at Shepard-Pruden to be successful — to hire staff that understands the role of the library.”

She pointed to hands-on work as proof of that commitment, from volunteering on winter Saturdays to clean the building and clear out broken furnishings, to shelf-reading and straightening the collection by hand — the same ground-level rebuilding she now intends to bring region-wide.

“This community has so embraced me. I am forever grateful for that,” she said. “I feel like I will always be here in Edenton. I live here, I don’t plan on moving. But I always feel like Shepard-Pruden and Edenton, Chowan County, will just always hold a special place for me as director.”

Kallas called Shepard-Pruden the busiest location in the region, and said its collection has grown through community partnerships, including a relationship with the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter that has donated books to the library — a reform she wants replicated at every branch.

Washington and the Hertford/Perquimans Branch

Kallas said the Washington branch serves a diverse, largely home-based population with active crafting groups, and she wants the collection there rebuilt to match. “However we can build up that connection, that part of the collection for that group and those groups there,” she said.

For the Hertford branch serving Perquimans County, she highlighted an already strong children’s program she wants to expand rather than replace. “They’ve got a great children’s program that they currently have great attendance with,” Kallas said. “Whatever we can do to build up the children’s collection there, in order to support their current programs… I think that again we dive into our local history for that location, and whatever we can do to beef up those connections in our collection, I think would be great.”

Closing the Digital Divide

Across all four counties, Kallas said the biggest structural challenge is one the library system cannot solve alone: internet access in rural dead zones.

“The digital divide is difficult throughout the region,” she said. “While we have resources available, there’s areas in the region that are dead zones. We unfortunately will not be able to address that as a library system. That’s kind of out of our control until those resources are built in those areas.”

Where infrastructure is out of reach, Kallas said the region’s reform has to come from the librarians themselves — meeting families where they are rather than waiting for them to come through the door. In Chowan County, that has meant signing up rural families for library cards at school events and coordinating with ESL teachers to deliver and collect books for families who can’t easily get to the building themselves.

“I think those are ways that in rural communities we really reach out and address those needs for the community,” she said. “And that’s what I hope to build with the other libraries in this system — that we are again reaching those areas.”

A Gradual Handoff

Kallas, who resigned as Chowan County librarian to take the regional post, said the timeline is not a clean break. She is honoring a commitment she made to the Shepard-Pruden Board of Trustees and will split her time between the Edenton library and her new regional duties until a replacement is hired.

Kallas did not take the added responsibility lightly.

“I really honestly do believe I am serving God’s will,” Kallas said. “I was very hesitant stepping into this role. I quite honestly struggled with it. I did not feel prepared to step into director after only being here for eight months, and, you know, I’ve only been out of school for a year. This was my first role as a librarian, and while I’ve worked in the library field for a number of years, it’s a different level of leadership. It’s a different level of work.”

She expects the full handoff to take six to seven weeks. The position has already been posted locally and at the state level, including with East Carolina University, UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Chapel Hill, along with employment agencies. Six applications have come in so far, and three candidates are slated for interviews, though Kallas said there is no firm deadline to fill the seat.

“Right now it’s a slow transition into that role because I am waiting to hire the replacement here as Chowan County Librarian. However, I made a commitment to my Board of Trustees here at Shepherd Pruden, and I’m honoring that. So right now, I’m splitting time between Shepherd Pruden and Regional,” she said.

Kallas will oversee a regional staff of three — two full time, one part time — along with four county librarians who report directly to her. In total, roughly 30 employees across the region will fall under her leadership, with a regional budget she estimates at slightly over $1 million, up from the quarter-million-dollar budget she managed in Chowan County.

“This was not on my 2026 bingo card,” Kallas said. “It’s a bit overwhelming right now because there is so much to learn and so much to do. If I do the job properly, then it won’t be an easy road ahead. It will be rebuilding region as I did at Shepherd Pruden for the first six months.”

Kallas said she expects the first six months as director to be a period of learning and rebuilding, much as her tenure in Edenton began, before the region can move into a period of sustained growth and reform.

“For the first six months, it’s going to be a learning curve and building,” she said, “and then really building a firm foundation, and then building off of that moving forward.”