Newsmaker
Monday, June 29, 1998
Name: Janet Mason
Age: 50
Education: MSW, University of Michigan; MBA, Boston College
Hobbies: Hiking, reading
The new state librarian, Virginia Lowell, is facing systemwide reorganization, opening a new library and making $212,000 in budget cuts in the next few months. That's the bad news. From business to books
The good news is, she has Janet Mason to help her meet these goals.
Mason was named executive director of the Hawaii State Library Foundation in April. The foundation is a private, nonprofit organization that provides supplemental funding to Hawaii's public libraries. It donated $60,000 to libraries last year.
"We have found an outstanding entrepreneur in Janet, and we expect the foundation to bring additional resources into the state library system in a variety of new ways," Alvin Narimatsu, president of the foundation's board of trustees, stated in announcing her appointment.
Legislation passed in 1994 allows the foundation to run businesses on library property. Mason will command this new-found freedom to funnel profits into the Hawaii State Public Library System.
A cappuccino kiosk and gift shop at the downtown library, staffed by volunteers and one full-time employee, are generating dollars after two years of operation. This is the first of several business ventures Mason has planned for libraries around the state.
To meet the objectives of the new legislation, she relies on a core of volunteers to make the businesses successful. She depends on businesses and private citizens to help with the annual golf tournament fund-raiser.
"This position requires a very interesting combination of business ventures and nonprofit work that I find very appealing," Mason said.
She has held management positions with Hawaiian Electric Co., the East-West Center and Planned Parenthood of Hawaii but said her months with the foundation have been the most enjoyable.
Over the next several years she will focus on reinforcing both the money and people power behind the foundation.
She said that although the foundation now manages assets of more than $800,000, it is the volunteers that will make the businesses profitable and the libraries better.
By Michelle Cournoyer, Star-Bulletin
