Above: Julie Balutis, GPO’s new Managing Director, LSCM joins the Agency from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).



TURNING IDEAS INTO ACCESS

GPO Welcomes New Managing Director, Library Services & Content Management 

 

GPO’s new Managing Director of Library Services & Content Management (LSCM) Julie Balutis started her role at GPO in September, but it wasn’t the first time she had been to the Agency. Nearly a decade ago, she was working at a consulting company that bid on a project with GPO.

“As part of the bid process, we visited GPO headquarters and got to do a plant tour,” explains Balutis. “I remember walking through the plant with the gigantic printing presses and seeing the combination of history and the future in one place. I thought it was so cool. The knowledge that is here is so inherent in the building, the equipment, the people.”

Both Balutis’s parents were civil servants—her mother worked for the U.S. Census Bureau and her father at the Department of Commerce.

“The importance of public service got drilled into me from a very young age,” says Balutis, who was born in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining GPO, Balutis worked as the Director of Grants
Policy and Management at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

“I found a passion for the library community,” says Balutis. “Access to trusted Government information is maybe more important now than it has ever been. I am excited to play a role in that.”

Above: Balutis will help guide the strategic direction for the National Collection, which includes all public information products of the U.S. Government.

Balutis says she is looking forward to getting to know her team better, as well as continuing the progress made toward a digital Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP).

“There is so much knowledge and experience and creativity in the LSCM unit alone, and I have something to learn from everyone,” says Balutis. “I hope to help GPO continue evolving with the ways the public is accessing and consuming information.”

Balutis lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband and German Shepherd River.
“Even though I’m from Washington, D.C., the city never gets old,” says Balutis. “You don’t have an appreciation for it when you’re younger, but there is so much here.”