By CLAYTON PARK

She loves adventure, drives a red and white racing-style Honda motorcycle, and belongs to an Internet mailing list called "Wet Leather."

Oh, and she's also Greenwood Library's new head librarian.

Meet Franchesca Wainwright. "No, we don't all wear our hair in buns," laughs Wainwright, who explains that "Wet Leather" is a network for Northwest motorcycle enthusiasts.

She may not wear her hair in a bun, but Wainwright does share one attribute with all librarians, bun-wearing or not: a deep and abiding love of books.

Wainwright is a native of Rotherham, England ("where James Harriott's books are set," she notes), who moved to North America as a child, briefly staying in Ontario, Canada, before moving to Seattle in 1968 where her family settled down in Ballard. She graduated from Ballard High School (class of 1980), and at age 18 took a part-time job at the Ballard Library where her initial job was shelving books.

After a couple of years, she was transferred to the downtown Central Library where she continued to work part-time as a library assistant, while attending the University of Washington where she earned a B.A. in political science in 1985.

From 1987 to 1991, she worked at the Greenwood Library as a coordinating library associate. "It was when I was working here (at Greenwood) that I decided to make this my career," said Wainwright, who explained that "up until that point, it was still a part-time job."

While at Greenwood, Wainwright worked closely with children's librarian Kathy Tufel and Mary Ross, who later became head librarian at Greenwood.

Thanks to the encouragement Wainwright received from her co-workers at Greenwood, she went back to the UW to earn a masters in library and information science, which she received in 1991.

For the past eight years, Wainwright has worked at the Central branch, as a reference librarian in the government publications department.

A year ago, Ross left Greenwood to take on a new challenge: designing a training program on using information resources found on the Internet that she is now teaching to library staffs throughout the state.

Since then, Greenwood has had a number of people fill in as temporary team leaders, including Mary Hillman of the Lake City branch, Bob Hageman of the Broadview branch and Sandra Sinner, a library associate at the Greenwood branch.

Upon hearing of the opening for permanent team leader at Greenwood, Wainwright jumped at the chance to turn in an application, even though she knew the job was being advertised nationally and that she had had no previous experience as a head librarian. "When this job came up, I KNEW I wanted it, immediately," she recalled.

"I felt very good when I got my first interview," she said, adding that she considered just getting that far to be a "personal success."

Much to her surprise, Wainwright was called back for a second interview. "Then, to get the job - it was amazing," she said. "It was just a fabulous thing for me."

"I thought, cool, I get to come back to this neighborhood!" said Wainwright, who officially started her new job on May12. "Coming back to Greenwood has felt like a homecoming," she added. "I recognized the faces of a lot of people that come here - a few I even remembered their names" eight years later.

Wainwright believes her familiarity, both with the neighborhood and with many of the staff at the Greenwood branch, no doubt played a factor in her landing the job. "During my interviews, they (the selection committee) could tell I had a real affection for this community and for this place.

"I have a real memory of what it's like to work here and I also know what the limitations are of this facility," said Wainwright of the cramped 46-year-old two-story building that currently houses the Greenwood branch. "We are running out of space," she said, noting that the current building has an inadequate children's area, limited shelf space for books, poor accessibility for people who use wheelchairs or walkers because of the fact that the branch is located on a steep hill with a parking lot that is a full level below the library.

The building also lacks the wiring needed to accommodate the number of computers the library would like to install. "Our computers are heavily used," said Wainwright.

Thanks to the passage of the library bond, the Greenwood Library has been earmarked to get a new 15,000-square-foot building that will be twice the size of the current facility. A ground-breaking has been tentatively slated for the year 2001 and the new building is scheduled to open in 2003. There's only one problem: the library has yet to decide on a new site. "The problem with the current site is that it's built on fill and also located on a steep slope," said Wainwright, who added, on the other hand, that "no site has been ruled out."

The community input/planning process is expected to begin next spring, said Wainwright.

"One of the exciting things about the new building is that we can finally be the library the community needs us to be," said Wainwright, who notes that the Greenwood branch draws users from throughout the Greenwood-Phinney Ridge area, including residents of the nearby Licton Springs neighborhood, located just east of Aurora Avenue.

When she isn't working, Wainwright enjoys spending her spare time riding motorcycles with her husband, Christian Owens, who also drives a Honda racing-style motorcycle. He works as a software tester for Microsoft, where he just so happens to be working on a second version of the company's popular "Motorcross Madness" game.

"I wake up every morning real excited about going to work," said Wainwright, who lives in Kirkland.

Of course, for Greenwood's new motorcyclist-librarian, even the commute can be fun.

The Greenwood Library is located at 8016 Greenwood Ave. N. For more information, call 684-4086.