Meant To Be

Greenwood Library’s new dean, Brent Roberts, traded the Big Sky Country for Southside Virginia as a result of a visit that he and his history-loving family made to Appomattox Court House in June 2015.

“We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived down here,’” Roberts recalled thinking on that trip, when he was director of libraries at Montana State University in Billings. “Around every bend in the road, there is history. Virginia is the cradle of American history. Then this job opened up. We fell in love with the area before we fell in love with Longwood.”

Roberts also was attracted to Longwood by the Vice Presidential Debate. “I thought that any institution with enough gumption to host an event like that must be an up-and-coming place, and I wanted to be part of that,” said Roberts, who started his new job Aug. 25.

Roberts had worked at the libraries of MSU-Billings since 2000, starting as a librarian and becoming associate director in 2005 and director in 2010. He also taught Japanese, a longtime interest.

“A library should be an active, vibrant part of the campus, and Greenwood Library already is vibrant,” he said.

A native of Moses Lake, Washington, Roberts is a graduate of Brigham Young University and has master’s degrees from the University of Washington (library science) and MSU-Billings (public relations). He is working on his dissertation for a Ph.D. in American studies from MSU-Bozeman.

Roberts and his wife, Lynde, a school librarian, have a daughter, Abigail, a freshman at BYU, and a son, Benjamin, a sophomore at Prince Edward County High School.