Jay Barth named executive director of CALS

On Tuesday, following a job search that began in the summer, the Central Arkansas Library System announced that beloved Natural State native Jay Barth will succeed Executive Director Nate Coulter, who revealed his plans to retire in March after a decade of leadership.

“This is that rare job here that allows you to do public service in a way that doesn’t involve elective office, and the mission speaks to me, so I decided to go for it,” Barth, 60, told the Arkansas Times in his ever-modest way. 

Barth, who is expected to start as executive director on Dec. 1, comes to CALS with immense experience in the worlds of politics, education and management. Following a 20-plus-year teaching career in the politics department at Hendrix College, he became the city of Little Rock’s first chief education officer in 2020. From 2022 to 2025, he served as the director of the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. Most recently, he’s worked as a consultant while also penning a monthly column for the Times. (We can’t help but feel like proud parents.)

“In some ways, this job kind of ties together my three primary roles,” Barth said. “I was at Hendrix for 26 years, and that’s obviously about learning and preparing for lifelong learning. Then, as the chief education officer, that was a really important preparer for so much of the community outreach work and social service work that the library now does. And then at the Clinton Library, I was in a large-scale management role for the first time in my career, and I found some skills that I didn’t expect to have.” 

The CALS Board of Directors chose Barth from a final round of three candidates that included Meredith Goins, a Tennessee-based data management professional, and Dionne Jackson, another previous Hendrix College professor who now works in equity and inclusion at Indiana’s DePauw University. 

One of the aspects of the job Barth is most looking forward to is working with staff members at all 14 of CALS’ branches throughout Pulaski and Perry counties.

“I get a little stir crazy if I’m stuck in the office all the time,” he said. “On Monday, I went to nine of the branches — the candidates were invited to do self-tours — and it was a really energizing day. I probably met 50 staff members around the system, and you really see the skill and ambidextrousness of the modern librarian. They’re experts on books for kids and books for adults, but they’re also helping to make sure that folks have the digital literacy help that they need. In Perry County, they have ukuleles available for check-out. If you go to Rooker, which is out in Otter Creek, that’s a really different community than the McMath location. And then Perry County, obviously, is very rural. It’s really exciting to me to think about how you do this work well in such a large array of different communities.”

Barth also hopes to help address concerns about legislation that targets libraries such as the much-contested Act 372, which makes it possible for librarians to face criminal liability if they distribute content vaguely defined as “obscene” or “harmful to minors.”

“I think a primary role of leadership is creating a safe environment for staff where they feel that they can go to work every day with confidence that they’re not going to be faced with consequences from Act 372,” he said. “That’s going to require thinking through how books are organized and labeled. The present board has already created some policy tweaks to begin to deal with that, but it’s going to have to be implemented on a branch-by-branch basis.”

First on Barth’s agenda, however, is learning the ropes. 

“I have the good fortune of having worked with CALS in a variety of ways over the years, and I know a good number of people at CALS, but I know there’s a lot to learn,” he said. “It’s a really healthy library system. The completion of the Main Library project is fantastic and creates a lot of opportunities.”