Former Tualatin Public Library Director Jerianne Thompson blamed frustrations with a Washington County agreement for her departure from the Tualatin Public Library. Thompson had been with the Tualatin Public Library since 2011 and had been Library Director since 2018.
“It wasn’t necessarily my preference to leave the city, but it had gotten to a point where it was untenable for me to continue,” Thompson told Tualatin Life. “The situation with the county has gotten really, really complicated.”
Since Spring of 2024, Thompson has been at the center of Washington County’s Cooperative Library Services (WCCLS) agreement with Tualatin and the county’s move to establish a “centralized collection” in libraries across Washington County as part of their funding intergovernmental agreement (tinyurl.com/2pxckvhy).
The effort aims to shift the authority on libraries’ physical collections to WCCLS, with primary drivers being identified as making the library cooperative more efficient and “financial savings realized as a result of efficiencies.” The implications of who will have total control over libraries’ physical collections and whether the change order will save money remain unclear to Thompson.
“Centralizing collection management does not save money,” Thompson said. “As currently structured, this plan represents additional ongoing costs for Washington County, and therefore the cooperative.”
The initiative has been criticized by libraries in cities like Tigard and Beaverton as well as by the Tualatin Public Foundation Board and Tualatin City Councilors, who at their meeting on April 23, said the rollout of the intergovernmental agreement was “crap.”
“It’s our library, we get to run it,” Tualatin Mayor Frank Bubenik said at the meeting. “Putting cities in this predicament because of their bad planning is crap.”
Tualatin City Council met on May 26 to review the intergovernmental agreement, and most councilors still called for increased transparency and expressed frustrations with not feeling represented by the decision.
“It’s neglectful of our community,” Councilor Bridgette Brooks said at the meeting. “How are we supposed to explain that we’re agreeing with a contract that we don’t even know what the MOU is because we’re on a timeline that the county commissioners are inflexible about?”
Bubenik said at the May 26 meeting that Tualatin City Councilors had reached out to Washington County Commissioners about increased collaboration on the project and said that “only two county commissioners” were open to further discussion.
After two years of working with Washington County, local library stakeholder groups, and the Library Leadership Group, Thompson said that she was at a “breaking point.”
“It wasn’t any one thing, it kind of got to a breaking point, really,” Thompson said. “I think there are advantages that could be gained from centralizing the work, but the way it’s currently planned, I believe, it will have a negative impact, specifically for our library in multiple ways.”
Thompson has pointed out problems with the proposed centralization of libraries’ physical collections since the process’s inception, telling the Tualatin City Council in September of 2025 that “WCCLS has said that they may need to reduce some services to libraries in order to work on core services and the collection centralization work.”
Tualatin Public Library currently has over 100,000 items, which, in addition to books, include movies, music, video games and magazines. Thompson said that the library’s curation of its current collection is responsible for some of its more niche items and is based on librarians’ interactions with individual community members.
“We’ve done a really good job building some niches in the collection,” Thompson said. “All of those things have been selected by local librarians based on community demand…That’s part of what I think Tualatin will lose under this current plan: the connections librarians are able to make with people.”
The “implementation and change management” phase of the centralized collection project will be underway until July 2027, and the Board of Washington County Commissioners discussed the budget throughout May.
While Thompson said she feels as though she’s “watching from the sideline at this point,” she expressed faith in the city council’s consideration of local interest moving forward and noted recent success library programs had experienced.
“They’re (Tualatin City Council) keeping local interest in mind for what’s best for our community and not making our community suffer because of shortfalls that have to be made up in other areas,” Thompson said. “Between June 2024 and July 2025, there were more than 26,000 people who attended programs at the library, and that’s the highest it’s ever been for the library.”
During her time as Library Director, Thompson helped champion multiple projects, including establishing the library’s Makerspace and Ice Age exhibit.
“Working for the City of Tualatin has just been an amazing experience,” Thompson said. “I’ve been able to work with a fabulous team of people, and we’ve been able to do some really impactful things for this community, and I am so proud of that.”
Thompson also served as Tualatin’s Equity and Inclusion Officer, which she said was another notable accomplishment she was proud of.
Thompson, who originally became a librarian because of her love for reading and research, said that over the course of her career in Tualatin, she has become better acquainted with the impact library services have on people’s lives.
“I think that libraries can be game changers for people,” Thompson said. “And I’ve seen that happen in our community.”
