AUBURN — After the official swearing in of the Griffin Free Public Library’s new director Monday, library trustees said the staffing change will usher in a new era.

New Hampshire native Ricky Sirois moved back to the Granite State from Kansas City, Kan., to become the library’s second full-time director since its opening in 1993.

“My job is to come in and reinforce the importance of the library to the community,” said Sirois, who starts as director today. “In a changing environment as far as home entertainment, it’s to really build the library to become a part of people’s everyday lives.”

Sirois’s predecessor, Edie Cummings, held the position for almost 20 years and retired last month at the age of 83. Before her, the library director job was part time.

Members of the library’s board of trustees said it was a challenge to find someone who could fill the position essentially created by Cummings.

“Edie, when she came on board, she was the one employee,” said trustee Nancy Mayland. “So we needed someone who had experience with administration, someone who was technically up on things like Facebook, and someone with the education.”

Town Administrator Bill Herman said the hiring process was competitive, with 41 total applicants. After a two-month search, library trustees brought five candidates to the town for final interviews.

“It was interesting to see how many people were interested in such a small town and such a small library,” trustee Fay Hanscomb said. “But it has a lot of potential.”

Sirois said he realized Auburn would be a good fit immediately in his interview.

“When I agreed to take this position, I was making a huge commitment and a huge change to my life, not just for me, but for my wife as well, but I was very comfortable coming out and making that leap,” he said. “My goal in coming in is to learn the community and get to know the people and figure out what the library can have as far as holdings and offer as far as programming to really reinforce its importance to the community.”

The trustees said they’re looking forward to working with Sirois as well, and hope he’ll help the library maintain its place in the community in the face of evolving technology.

“With e-books now, it was a concern just last year if libraries were going to close because nobody would read books anymore,” said alternate trustee Sharon Bluhm. “Hopefully Rick will lead us through that.”

And Sirois says he does have plans to utilize innovations like social media to engage with the community.

“We’ve got Facebook, and is there a Twitter account?” he asked the trustees.

When the board responded with a series of headshakes in the negative, Sirois said, “There will be.”

klannan@newstote.com