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Our Library’s New Leader

There is something new and very refreshing at the Greenwich Library, and her name is Carol Mahoney. When she was called upon to address a capacity audience for the library’s biannual Peterson Dinner at the Hyatt Regency last month, it marked her first full year as our librarian. Carol came to us with a strong resume covering more than twenty years of service in the Boston Public Library system where her last assignment, as Neighborhood Services Manager, was overseeing twenty-six full service branches and 160 employees. Prior to that she had served as director of libraries in Lexington, Lynnfield and Medway, Massachusetts. It doesn’t take long to realize that Carol Mahoney is a hands-on administrator totally dedicated to her profession.

Her well-constructed speech at the Peterson dinner cited some remarkable statistics about the usage of our library. A few of them are worth reciting here.

• The library’s total clientele consists of 41,417 Greenwich residents who have active library cards; that’s two out of three.

• In a single day, Tuesday after Labor Day, 17,140 books, DVDs and CDs were checked out or returned, a volume of transactions that would have been impossible to handle without the newly installed check-out machines.

• The number of reservations for library material each month is 15,000.

• In the course of a year the number of items circulated is 1,500,000, representing a three-fold turnover of the library’s inventory.

Given that the $25 million Peterson bequest was in support of the library’s business as well as music facilities, Carol appropriately couched her report in terms of return on investment (ROI). But any way you look at it, Greenwich Library is the biggest and busiest library in the state of Connecticut!

In her first year Carol spent a good deal of time listening and talking to the staff, friends and trustees to determine what was running well and what needed attention. As a result, the improvements she made were primarily back-office operations, IT systems and things no one sees, but are critical to the library’s overall efficiency.

We asked her what, if anything, set Greenwich and our library apart from Boston. She said she was astonished by the sheer number of volunteers and their willingness to spend so much time to help in every area. She was also impressed by the strong emphasis on education here in Greenwich, and how well our public school libraries are stocked. Coming from someone from Boston, which lays claim to being the intellectual pantheon of the country, this is high praise indeed.

But the library is about much more than books and digital media on the shelves. We need only peruse the monthly calendar to witness the wide range of programs offered by the library or conducted under its auspices. The children’s programs are oversubscribed. They range from “Drop-in Story Time” for preschoolers ages two to five, and the Junior Book Club for ages up to ten and eleven. Carol told of a mother and father who didn’t speak English but brought their children to every story hour and children’s program and could checked out bags full of books because they were free.

For adults there is the Foreign Affairs Book Club, visiting authors, Friday Films, Sunday concerts and, currently, volunteer tax assistance. We would be remiss if we did not mention the Flinn Gallery on the library’s second floor with its series of diverse and interesting art exhibits from unpublished Time magazine covers to avant-garde photography. Some exhibitions offer art for sale with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the library. Understandably popular in recent days are its internet job search programs and resume writing. It is interesting to note, Carol says, that during a recession there is a universal increase in library usage, while funding for libraries across the country is greatly diminished.

Enlarging on the ROI theme in her address to the Peterson dinner audience, Carol referred to ROEI, Return on Emotional Investment, or the bond between users and the libraries rooted in meeting the needs of the community “from baby lapsit to the nursing home”, as she put it. For some the library is a second home, like the author who used the library so extensively to research his book that when it was published, he dedicated it to the library. We believe that Clementine Lockwood Peterson, whose generous gift has done so much to help place Greenwich Library in the forefront of community libraries everywhere, would be quite pleased with our library’s new leader.