Derek Grote starts today as the new Lead Library Clerk at the Nevada Public Library.
Raised in Hampton, Iowa, where he graduated in 2006 from Hampton Dumont High School, Derek has been working most recently as a “stay-at-home-dad” to his two daughters, Maya, 9, and Sylvie, 6. With the girls starting school last week, he’s excited for a new opportunity in an environment he enjoys.
“I feel the library is low stress, calm, and forward-facing with people,” he said.
Derek said he’ll appreciate the interaction with people who come into the library, because that will be much different than his most recent full-time job as a medical technician, aka “lab rat.”
Lab work wasn’t his goal out of high school. He went to NIACC to pursue a degree in journalism, and then transferred to the University of Northern Iowa and earned a teaching degree in English. When he couldn’t get a teaching position right out of school, he worked in several types of jobs before landing a pharmacy tech job at Mary Greeley. “It spoke to me, so I went back to school to be a lab medical technician and worked at that in Marshalltown until 2021.” That’s when, during the pandemic, he became a full-time stay-at-home dad, while his wife, Whitney, continued her career in human resources at Iowa State University.
Derek is familiar with the Nevada Public Library and, until recently, served on the Nevada Public Library Board. He enjoyed that assignment.
His job as Lead Library Clerk, he said, will entail supervising high school library employees and their scheduling, working with the interlibrary loan program, and helping at the front desk, among other things.
A few fun facts about Derek…
He and his wife have around 400 board games in their home collection, so it’s not surprising that he lists “playing board games with his wife” as one of his main pastimes. He also enjoys gardening and reading, and sometimes creates his own little college courses based on authors, topics, and books to stimulate intensive research.
When it comes to reading, he’s usually reading up to seven or eight books at a time. But one book, in particular, stuck out for him over the past year: “The Serviceberry” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. “It’s a fast read … about how we should work together as a community, much like the serviceberry works in nature to provide connection. I think it’s a good read about drawing people together.”
With fall around the corner, Derek said his favorite fall activities include going to the apple orchards in Gays Mills, Wisconsin, where he loves the apple donuts and apple cider, and then stopping at a Wisconsin cheese mart to pick up goat cheese. He also loves driving home through McGregor, Iowa, and perusing its downtown.
-Written by Marlys Barker, City of Nevada