Public Employee Press

Queens Library #1

With 21 million items circulated every year, the nation’s most diverse library system is also the busiest.

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

If you were brought blindfolded to any branch in the Queens Library system, no one could blame you for feeling you were at the United Nations.

The library serves the most ethnically diverse community in the country. In addition to English, during a library visit, you are likely to hear an immigrant from New Delhi speaking Hindi, a recently naturalized citizen from Moscow talking in Russian, a native of Beijing conversing in Mandarin and a Dominican-American requesting books in Spanish.

Greatest asset: library workers
About a third of Queens residents come from abroad, and the library system devotes a lot of its resources to immigrants. Their high demand for library services helps explain why Queens hit number one in circulation in the country in 2007, according to the American Library Association.

“We are very proud that the library reaches out so well to its constituency,” said Local 1321 member Anita Citron, who manages the Adult Learning Center at the Central Library in Jamaica. The center helps patrons with reading and writing in English, citizenship and employment.

Director Thomas W. Galante calls staffers like Citron the key to the system’s ability to meet the needs of the 2.2 million residents of Queens.
“Queens Library’s greatest asset is its staff,” Galante said.

“They are genuinely concerned about helping customers access everything the library has: locating a useful Web site, completing a homework assignment, learning to use a computer or finding a novel they’ll stay up all night to finish.”

Karen Heau, another member of Queens Library Guild Local 1321, is the youth services manager at the Flushing Community Library. The library system recently replaced a smaller branch there with the new, $35 million four-story building with expanded resources that better meets the needs of the community with its large Asian population.

“In a sense, the libraries went through a rebirth in the ’90s as they responded to the needs of immigrants,” said Heau, a 16-year veteran of the Queens library system.

Branch Manager Steven Nobel works at the Middle Village CommunityLibrary, which caters to a working-class population. The union member noted that a generation ago, some people predicted that the personal computer would lead to the demise of public libraries. In fact, libraries have adapted by beefing up their computer services, providing patrons Internet access and software programs like word processing, according to Nobel. These days, patrons are as likely to visit the library to work at a computer as to check out a book or DVD.

“What’s ironic is that Queens’ recognition as the library with the highest circulation occurred as we were called upon to continue providing quality services and expand to six days a week despite a staff shortage,” said Local 1321 President Margalit Susser.

“Many of our members in Local 1321 love the neighborhoods where they work and have become an important part of these communities,” Susser said.

“It’s thanks to their commitment and dedication that Queens has won its recognition as number one.”