Vicky Coffin has only been the head librarian at the Salem Free Public Library for a few weeks, but she has already seen an outpouring of support from the community.

“I’ve had people that made me homemade cookies, they’ve brought me flowers, they’ve brought me vegetables,” she said. “It’s been so wonderful.”

Coffin is a 17-year veteran of the field with experience in both public and academic libraries and comes from a family of educators. However, with an undergraduate degree that focused on audio and video production, starting a career in the library was an exercise in trusting her abilities.

“I thought of all these things that I thought I was good at and that I enjoyed, and I just decided on a big leap of faith to go to library school,” she said. “It just seemed like a good idea.”

Since then, she has worked in a variety of libraries. Before coming to Salem, she was working part-time at libraries in Wethersfield and at Eastern Connecticut State University. With her kids in school full-time, she wanted one full-time position.

“It was a really good opportunity here,” she said. “It’s a beautiful town, everybody has been so pleasant and very accommodating.”

Coffin was able to work with outgoing head librarian Rachel Gaither for a few weeks for a smooth transition into the job. She commended the staff for maintaining such a well-run library and said she would work on bringing in more programming and updating the library’s website while making sure the library is a place for everyone in the community to learn and feel welcome.

As head librarian, she wears many hats ranging from creating budgets and coordinating schedules to ordering new materials and maintaining the collection. She said she makes it a point to balance the administrative work with interacting with patrons and figuring out how to best serve their needs with her skillset, whether they want to conduct research or just find a good book.

“It’s become one of my very favorite things because you meet all kinds of people,” Coffin said. “I always find peoples’ stories very interesting, and you never know what to expect when you meet a new person.”

“It’s just been a best case scenario for me,” she said.

a.hutchinson@theday.com