The Board of Directors of Pennsylvania Integrated Library System (PaILS) has selected Scott Thomas as the Executive Director replacing Lewis Maurer upon his retirement. PaILS is a non-profit corporation that oversees SPARK, an open source, Evergreen-based ILS shared by over 80 Pennsylvania libraries.
Thomas comes to PaILS from he Scranton Public Library (Lackawanna County Library System) where he has served as Head of Information Technologies / Technical Services. He holds a Master’s Degree in Library Science from Columbia University and a Master’s in English from the University of Scranton. He was the recipient of a PaLA Certificate of Merit in 2013 and is an adjunct faculty member at Northampton Community College. Thomas has been involved in efforts to establish a shared ILS in Pennsylvania since 2009 when he was tapped to serve on the “Statewide ILS Task Force” convened by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries.
Bill Schell, President PaILS Board of Directors, York County Library System and Martin Library Association, “The PaILS Board is delighted to have Scott Thomas as our new Executive Director, following a nationwide search. As a charter member of Commonwealth Libraries’ task force, Scott was instrumental in the origination of an open source ILS for Pennsylvania. Scott has been instrumental in the growth of PaILS, leading the migration of more than 40 libraries to the SPARK platform. His will be an important voice in the software development of Evergreen!
Mr. Thomas assumes leadership of PaILS on December 16th.