A familiar face will be returning to the Great Neck Library as the Board of Trustees unanimously passed a motion to hire Denise Corcoran to again serve as director.
Corcoran, who was appointed to the same position in January 2018, will succeed Interim Director George Trepp beginning on Sept. 13, according to library officials. The trustees granted Corcoran a five-year contract with an annual salary of $175,000, with an additional $5,000 annually, during an Aug. 24 meeting.
Trustees Chelsea Sassouni and Mimi Hu expressed their excitement to have Corcoran return to the library and said that the community will benefit from having her once again serve as director. Corcoran’s return to the library comes after more than a decade of turnover in the director position.
Rebecca Rosenblatt Gilliar, who served on the Director Search Committee that initially hired Corcoran several years ago, said Corcoran’s expertise will greatly serve the public.
“The return of Denise Corcoran as director of the Great Neck Library is such welcome news,” Gilliar said in an email to Blank Slate Media. “Our library has been mired in leadership difficulty for too many years. She will restore staffing levels and replenish the core collection, on the way to making our library a gathering place for scholarship once again.”
Efforts to reach Corcoran for comment were unavailing.
After replacing former Director Kathy Giotsas, who was fired in 2017, Corcoran announced that she would resign from the library’s director position in January 2019.
Corcoran has a Master of Library Science degree from St. John’s University and is working on her Master of Business Administration at Stony Brook University. She holds a New York State Public Librarian’s Professional Certificate and has permanent New York State teaching certification in secondary education, English for grades 7 to 12. Her awards include two Congressional Achievement Awards for Outstanding and Invaluable Service to the Community.
Before her initial appointment in 2018, Corcoran held a variety of positions in the Queens Library system.
As the director of community library services, Corcoran managed and supervised 20 community libraries, including two teen centers, in the system. This entailed allocating, overseeing and directing personnel resources, supervising budgets and expenditures, and promoting the library through interaction with elected officials, community groups and schools.
