If you want to see Whitehall Township Public Library Director Nancy Adams, you better hurry.

Her last day before retirement is tomorrow – Friday, Jan. 25.

Adams admitted to having mixed feelings about leaving the Whitehall library.

"I'm leaving behind a really great place with great people," she said. "It's so satisfying and I am going to miss it, oh my word."

Adams, who turned 65 in June, has decided to retire in part to spend more time with her husband, John, who retired four years ago.

"I think that's probably the biggest [reason to retire]. We want to do things together and I'm not available," she said.

Noting her job as library director is not 9 to 5, she said she is looking forward to the chance to be spontaneous instead of planning everything around her work schedule.

"This is as much about freedom as anything else," she said.

Two weeks after her retirement, she and her husband will visit Lake Placid, N.Y., with friends. At the former Olympic Village, they will do the Lake Placid bobsled experience, which includes a short but fast ride in a bobsled down part of the former Olympic track.

They also plan to go to Alaska at some point, though they have not decided when, she said. It won't be a cruise but rather a trip where they can make their own decisions about how long to stay in one place.

"We don't need to take a trip where we're sitting and looking out the window," she said.

The couple also looks forward to enjoying the freedom to spend time with their grandsons, Dylan, 5 and Evan, 3, children of their older son, Mike. Their younger son is Greg.

Adams has worked for the Whitehall library since April 1998. Before that she had been director of the Southern Lehigh Public Library. The former Whitehall director, Dan Solove, moved to a position in Bethlehem.

"He called me," Adams said. "He said, 'This is coming open. You might want to take a look.'"

Adams moved into public libraries after serving as a corporate librarian for several years for Air Products. Before that, she worked as assistant circulation librarian at Ursinus College.

"I like public libraries best," she said.

Working with the public allows a librarian to deal with a lot of different kinds of people with a lot of different interests and needs from their libraries.

They are "all kinds of people with all kinds of interests who come to the library for all kinds of reasons. That's what's really cool," she said.

One of the things that makes the work so satisfying is the cooperation that is sometimes needed in order to answer a patron's question. Staff at public libraries even call other public libraries in the quest to assist a patron, she said.

"We work together," she said. "There's always somebody who is going to try to help and I love that."

She enjoys being with others who love people and the challenge of helping patrons.

"We fully recognize that if we don't take care of those people walking in, there's no reason for us to be here," she said.

Adams earned a bachelor's degree in humanities from Muhlenberg College and a master's in library science from the University of Kentucky. She said she knew a humanities degree would not prepare her for a job, so she went to graduate school.

Her mother had been a teacher and then a librarian.

"I thought of librarianship because it was part of our family," she said.

Adams said she plans to do absolutely nothing for the first month after retirement and enjoy the chance to be spontaneous.

Then she plans to give back to the community. She will start by talking to representatives of organizations such as Meals on Wheels and Habitat for Humanity in order to find a good volunteer position. Which one she will choose will depend on what opportunities match her skills and interests.

At this point only one thing is certain.

"The one thing I don't want to do for anybody is fundraising," she said.