Joshua Tiffany, who has served as the director of Gray Public Library for more than a decade, will resign from his post effective June 14.

Tiffany plans on moving to Nashville, Tennessee, to find out what comes next in his career. He said that Nashville, his wife’s hometown, has been like a second home to him for several years, and he is excited to take his wide variety of skills to a major city.

Tiffany has been working in libraries since 2001, starting out in Providence, Rhode Island, before moving home to Maine in 2005 to be closer to his elderly parents. After moving back to Maine, Tiffany said he had a very hard time getting back into the library world, and worked in financial services until about 2008. Afterward, he decided that libraries were his true passion, working as head of circulation in Scarborough and getting a master’s in library and information science.

Eventually, the Gray library director position opened up, and Tiffany ascended to his first-ever director role at a place, he said, where he could put his philosophies into practice while also getting to know the community.

One of Tiffany’s greatest accomplishments during his time as director came in late 2023, when he was asked to serve as Gray’s interim town manager until the arrival of a new one in January 2024. Although he admitted that he was initially unprepared to take on the role of town manager, Tiffany said that, according to every report, he did an excellent job in his unexpected position. He also praised Darcel Devou, who served as interim library director during that time. Tiffany said the fact that Devou and the rest of the team were able to step up while still keeping him informed of what was going on at the library was amazing.

Additionally, for the past 10 years, Tiffany has been running a monthly list of high-demand items so that libraries have a better sense of what people are looking for, which is accompanied by an introductory paragraph where he talks about the wonders and joys of libraries. He had written and distributed the penultimate list on Friday, April 25, and received a strong reception from readers, with people from all over Maine thanking him and calling him an inspiration.

“It’s truly been touching to see the impact I’ve had on the Maine State Library system from this tiny little hill called Gray,” said Tiffany.

When asked about what it was like running a library in a period of massive social and technological changes to the ways that people read and consume media in general, Tiffany called it fascinating. He recalled how he was always a major proponent of having different formats, specifically audio-visual materials, in libraries. He has heavily invested in the library’s Blu-ray and 4K collections, which can be a resource for those who don’t have streaming, and said that the recent resurgence of vinyl records showed that there was still interest in physical media.

The act of browsing and physically going to a space to look for items was a unique experience in his eyes, and he noted that libraries are one of the last places that people can do that for physical media such as DVDs and vinyl.

When asked how the library was coping with the recent dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Tiffany said that Gray was fortunate in that, except for a prorated one-day event delivery and some support mechanisms, the Maine State Library system had very little to do with their operations. With that being said, he did note that they had a van delivery shutdown last summer, and he is uncertain of how much the institute supports that end of the process. Although he’s wary of longer-term impacts, Tiffany does not see the Gray Public Library falling into the existential danger faced by other smaller libraries, saying that, even though countless people have told him that there’s no more need for libraries, there are still more public libraries in the United States than there are McDonald’s.

As for Nashville, he said that one of the jobs he was looking at was collection manager for the city’s entire 21-branch library system. However, he also said that he would never forget the amazing time he had both in the town of Gray and as part of the Maine State Library system.