BRUNSWICK — A mid-life career change led Liz Doucett to Brunswick’s Curtis Memorial Library nearly 20 years ago. As she approaches retirement this summer, the library director said she loves the job just as much as she did on day one.

“I walked in the door and fell in love with the place,” Doucett said. “It was in January and it was snowstorms every single Wednesday the first month that I was here, so I had to love it to stay.”

At the time of her first introduction to Brunswick, Doucett was living in Massachusetts but had grown up spending summers on Haskell Island off Harpswell.

A lifelong reader, she left a career in marketing in the early 2000s and went to library school — following in the footsteps of her grandmother and great-aunt, also librarians. Doucett worked as an assistant library director in Massachusetts for two years before coming to the Curtis Memorial Library in 2007, where she would stay for the rest of her career.

Doucett credits her success as library director to an excellent staff, board and community, all of whom helped make Curtis Library the bustling “third place” — somewhere for people to gather besides home and work — that it is today.

“I am very hopeful that the community will continue to see the value of what a public library can do,” she said.

Throughout her tenure, Doucett and her team have designed countless community programs, overseen changes to the library building, pushed through challenging times and expanded the idea of the library as more than a place to borrow a book.

“Liz has skillfully led the library through the 2008 recession, the closing of Brunswick Naval Air Station, COVID, and federal funding cuts,” Tahnthawan Coffin, Curtis Memorial Library board president, said in a prepared statement earlier this month.

“Curtis has thrived under Liz’ leadership — launching the nationally-recognized Library of Things and the EV-Bookmobile, getting certified by the Sustainable Library Initiative, hosting illustration exhibits by Garth Williams and Robert McCloskey and growing the Endowment Fund to over $8 million,” Coffin continued. “Liz has also been a careful steward of the library’s buildings, restoring the original windows and doors in the 1904 Building, ‘greening’ the mezzanine, updating the lobby in the 1999 addition, and preserving and now adding to Curtis’ art collection.”

Among the programs she’s most proud of, Doucett mentioned the Conversations at Curtis speaker series, which brought authors and other interesting speakers to the library. She’s also excited about the library’s new hands-on Creative Hive space, where teens and adults can take arts and crafts classes, access 3D printers and fabrication tools, and get help digitizing records and tracing their genealogy.

A new art committee is also looking to expand the library’s art collection, and put out a call last week for local artists whose work articulates “a vision of what community means today in Brunswick and Harpswell.”

“We want people to walk in here and go, ‘I know that artist,'” Doucett said.

Doucett also helped facilitate illustration exhibitions featuring the work of Maine’s Robert McCloskey, best known for “Blueberries for Sal” and “Make Way for Ducklings,” and Garth Williams, who illustrated books including the “Little Golden” series, “Charlotte’s Web” and the “Little House on the Prairie” books.

The McCloskey exhibition in 2023 brought roughly 80,000 people from all over to Brunswick’s community library, Doucett said. A scene from “Blueberries for Sal” still greets visitors today as they ascend the lobby stairs.

“It was multi-generational. People came in with their grandmothers and mothers and their kids, and they’d all be looking at the same stuff and they’d all relate to it, because those books have staying power,” Doucett said. “We had people crying in the hallway, and it was so wonderful.”

More than ever before, the library was a key community resource during the COVID pandemic. Doucett said the staff tallied 26,000 trips from the circulation desk to the curb to drop off books and take-home activity bags for members while the building was closed.

Doucett might only have a few months left as library director, but she’s not done overseeing large projects. The quiet buzz of the library has been somewhat interrupted over the past few weeks by construction in the center lobby of the main building.

Imagined by Curtis’ customer experience manager Sarah Brown, the updated lobby will include moveable seating and book displays, a laptop bar and outlets, improved lighting, soundproofing, a self-serve coffee bar, and new ADA-accessible welcome desks. Construction is expected to be completed in July.

In her retirement, Doucett is looking forward to painting more, boating, volunteering, spending time with her three rescue dogs and spending lots of time “(sitting) around at the beach.”

A search committee is looking for the next director of Brunswick’s library. Whoever ends up getting the job, Doucett said, they’re in for a wonderful career.

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