A Tamaqua native has begun her term as president of a national association which represents 10,000 school librarians.

Dr. Nancy Everhart, who now resides in Tallahassee, Florida, was inaugurated to her position presiding over the American Association of School Librarians on June 29 in a ceremony in Washington, D.C.Everhart is currently Associate Professor, Director of the School Library Media Program and the PALM Center at Florida State University, a position she has held since 2005.PALM is an acronym for Partnerships Advancing Library Media and offers an array of services to support school library media specialists and other educators in Florida, throughout the United States, and internationally to improve their districts and schools, according to the AASL website (www.outstandingschoollibraries.org).Prior to arriving at Florida State, Everhart, a Tamaqua Area High School graduate, was school librarian at Tamaqua Junior High School (1981-83), MMI Preparatory School in Freeland (1983-88, also serving as a computer teacher) and Tamaqua Senior High (1990-1995). She has also served as an assistant and associate professor at St. John's University in Jamaica, N.Y. (1995-2005).She is married to Harry Everhart, a retired Panther Valley Middle School science teacher and a former member of the Tamaqua Area Board of Education. The Everharts have two sons, Drew, a Duke University graduate who is a research scientist, and Keith, a graduate of Georgetown University, who is an economist. Both sons are Tamaqua Area High School graduates. Drew and his wife Robin have a son, Jack.Nancy Everhart has belonged to the association since 1981 and had served on its board of directors from 2000-2004 when she was approached by its nominating committee about serving as president."At that time, I had just taken the job at Florida State, and it wasn't a good time for me to run for president, but the committee approached me again," said Everhart.The election was held in the fall of 2008, and Everhart began a three-year stint in which she served as president-elect for the past year prior to assuming the president's seat this year. After her one-year term as president, she will remain with the association's executive board for one more year as immediate past president.Everhart is looking forward to her term as president."It's a great group of people," she said. "I've been with it for 27 years, and it's done a lot for me professionally. Now, I'd like to give back."Everhart's duties as president include appointing 30 committees of the association, including members and chairs. She will also be a liaison between the state and national organizations and will go to their conferences, as well as writing a column for the association's journal. She will also serve as a contact for interviews for the media.As president, she said she is required to visit with six different state associations of her choosing, but while forming her platform while running for the position, she decided to take that a step further."My vision is that I was going to visit every state and an outstanding library in every state," Everhart related about what she calls her Vision Tour. She has met U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and mentioned her plan to him.She has been hoping that a television show would work with her as she visits each library, sort of like a school library reality tour, in order to show the public what such school libraries are like.Everhart said AASL had been working to forward critical legislation this year, noting that the Obama Administration had been proposing to dedicate more funding for school libraries, and she would like to see it as a budget line item. "We are also looking for funding to have certified school librarians in the libraries," she noted.Other objectives which she lists on the AASL website include identifying exemplary models for implementation and transferable visual products for support for implementation at the local, district, state and national levels and developing a national roster of celebrity, well-known educators and organizations, and public figures as advocates for school library media specialists and programs.She will also continue to promote the benefits of school libraries for students. "I want people to realize these exist and hope they get excited about the access to the materials," she mentioned.In addition to her AASL duties, Everhart also travels to London, England during the summer to teach at Florida State's Study Center located in Bloomsbury, which is one block from the British Museum. "Our faculty has an option to teach there," she said.Everhart has been involved in a special program on Web 2.0 media production and how to use it in library settings, utilizing London as the subject matter on which practical projects are based.Students plan, design and create websites, podcasts, short films, digital photographs, personalized books, and other multi-media presentations, according to Everhart's post on the association website.For more information on the American Association of School Librarians, visit www.outstandingschoollibraries.