ATG Star of the Week: Shelly Stuard, Alibris

Name: Shelly Stuard
Title:  Director, Library Services
Organization:  Alibris
Address:  1250 45^th St.  Emeryville, CA  94608
Phone  (510) 594-4530
Fax  (510) 550-6052
Email  shellys@alibris.com
Website  www.alibris.com/library

Born and lived  Born in Ohio. Have also lived in CT, Mexico City, Southern California, AZ, London, Boston and Northern California.

Early Life  When I was seven, my family moved to Mexico City for my father’s job. We ended up living there for nine years and it was a great experience. I went to school half the day in English and the other half in Spanish, so am still fluent in Spanish.  After Mexico, we moved to Orange County, California, where I finished high school and then went to the University of Redlands for a business degree. I spent a semester abroad in Salzburg, Austria, and then spent the summer traveling around Europe, which just cemented my love of international travel. Not surprisingly, my graduate degree was from the Thunderbird School of International Management and my first job was in London, England!

Professional Career and Activities  My career has been spent in sales and marketing jobs at a variety of companies. The common product across all the companies is paper, from selling computer-aided design supplies (paper and ink) to selling and marketing custom covers for binding machines to marketing patient education materials (pamphlets) to starting Alibris for Libraries (books).  I’ve worked for Alibris for Libraries for the past 12 years, which has been a great opportunity to combine my love of travel with my love of books.

Family  Married. Two great step-kids. One daughter who is off to college this fall.

In My Spare Time  Traveling, reading, hiking, tennis.

Favorite Books  Any book by Geraldine Brooks, Maria Doria Russell, Ann Patchett or Jane Austen

Pet Peeves  Loud sneezes

Philosophy   Make things happen

Most Memorable Career Achievement  Developing Alibris for Libraries into a great product and service for libraries. I was hired 12 years ago to head up a division of Alibris specializing in libraries. Along the way, I’ve worked with some great colleagues and have met hundreds of incredible library customers and prospects. We got through some rough dot.com-bust years and tough budget times to continue to offer a great product and service for fulfilling hard-to-find, OP and OS books to thousands of libraries worldwide.

Goal I hope to achieve five years from now:  I’m hoping I will still be working for Alibris for Libraries, traveling around the world, peddling books!

How/where do I see the industry in five years: Libraries are changing at a rapid pace with the strong emergence of e-books over the past couple of years . Obviously, I’m hoping that print will still play a part in library acquisitions and that e-resources won’t become all-consuming. It will be interesting to see how PDA (patron-driven-acquisitions) plays out as well, both for e and p.