Cara Perrion serves the K.O. Lee Aberdeen Public Library as Assistant Director and Community Services Librarian. She will be sharing a look at the library’s remarkable L. Frank Baum Collection with us Friday morning, followed by monitoring our personally accessing the collection in small groups.
Since earning her Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she has spent 27 years as a librarian. Her various roles have included circulation, young adult services, community outreach, and administration. “Most of my career has been dedicated to serving the Aberdeen community,” she says, “where I am passionate about connecting people with resources, programs, and opportunities that enrich their lives.” She has found librarianship a perfect path to making a difference in the world.
When not reading or talking about books, classes, or events, Cara is an enthusiastic golfer and gardener.
Sue Boland is a historian for the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center in Fayetteville, NY. For more than two decades, she has studied the life and times of Gage and her son-in-law L. Frank Baum under the direction of Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner, Founder and former Executive Director of the Gage Center. For our convention, Sue has agreed to join Michael Patrick Hearn in a discussion about the impact of Matilda Jewel Gage on research into Gage and Baum. She will be involved in our tribute to Sally Wagner, and will participate in a panel “Keeping L. Frank Baum’s Spirit Alive in the 21st Century.”
Sue spent many years as a senior docent at the Gage Center. She assisted in producing “The Wonderful Mother of Oz” pamphlet, catalogued the center’s Fred Meyer Collection of Oz Memorabilia (calling the task a “wonderful education into Oz fandom”), and curated an exhibit of Gage/Baum family photographs, showing several L. Frank Baum photographs for the first time. Sue has led walking tours of Fayetteville as Gage and Baum knew it and created the first driving tour of Gage/Baum sites throughout Central New York for the International Wizard of Oz Club’s national convention in 2008.
The Matilda Joslyn Gage Center, Fayetteville, NY
You will find her article,“Wicked Influence: Meet the Central NY Woman Who Inspired the Witches of Oz,” at Syracuse.com. While most of her papers and published writings have been about Gage, she is currently researching Baum’s time in Chicago and how the city helped him create the world of Oz.
Sue holds Masters degrees from the State University of New York at Albany and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. We greatly appreciate her willingness to join our program
