{"id":45364,"date":"2021-08-06T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-06T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/meet-cortezs-newest-library-director\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:24:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:24:48","slug":"meet-cortezs-newest-library-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/meet-cortezs-newest-library-director\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Cortez\u2019s newest library director"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"New
New Cortez Public Library Director Isabella Sharpensteen is excited to make the haven of books a welcoming space for all. (Kala Parkinson\/The Journal)<\/span>Kala Parkinson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

She wanted to be a police officer.<\/p>\n

That dream changed when Isabella Sharpensteen moved to Southwest Colorado in 2017. She was hired as a part-time cataloger at the Cortez Public Library. Fast-forward four years, and she\u2019s the library director.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Germany and pursuing paralegal and criminology degrees, it isn\u2019t the life she had dreamed since childhood.<\/p>\n

While she misses home \u2013 she hasn\u2019t been back in five years \u2013 the nature-loving, Facetime-reliant, bookworm soul is excited for the future she\u2019ll help to build at the library.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be the best director ever,\u201d she said. \u201dI want to make the library kind of like a home for people that they feel comfortable to share \u2014 and literally everybody is welcome.\u201c<\/p>\n

She has high aspirations, and she\u2019s applying to graduate school programs to begin earning her master\u2019s in library science remotely.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want, first of all, (to) get through this COVID mess and kind of get back to normal,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sharpensteen has reached out to nonprofit organizations with the hope of setting up classes at the library that would foster employment opportunities and offer mental health resources to the public.<\/p>\n

She also is excited that the library is back to acquiring new books after budget cuts during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Her ascent to library director saw her transitioning from part-time cataloger to full-time employee as she took on the additional role of interlibrary loan technician.<\/p>\n

From there, she became the interim director in April until the position was officially granted to her in July.<\/p>\n

When it comes to selecting a novel to read, she is most thrilled when devouring mysteries \u2013 particularly from Scandinavian authors. This makes sense, given her German nationality \u2013 and her penchant for gore.<\/p>\n

You can even find a few such reads in the Cortez library, she said.<\/p>\n

Before moving to Colorado, she lived in Texas and Arizona.<\/p>\n

The Phoenix heat proved to be too sweltering for her, though.<\/p>\n

So, after nine months of living there, she and her husband packed up and moved to Mancos, where her friend looked after her horse at the time.<\/p>\n

Sharpensteen was 9 years old when she first begged her parents to ride horses. She now has two, and this corner of Colorado has proved to be a freeing sanctuary for Sharpensteen and her four-legged friends.<\/p>\n

On weekends, you can find her stationed in the saddle. She\u2019ll be adorned in wide breeches, long boots and a riding jacket as she competes in dressage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsabella is the right person at the right time to lead our staff and oversee operations at our library,\u201d said Cortez City Manager Drew Sanders in a news release July 19. \u201cI look forward to watching our library programs and services grow to meet the needs of our community while under Isabella\u2019s leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Isabella Sharpensteen took over as director for Alicia Gomori-Lusker, who resigned in April<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,638,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-library-and-museum","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86462,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45364\/revisions\/86462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45364"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}