In her commedia dell’arte mask, Margaret Watley was in fine Mardi Gras form as she attended the ninth annual Fat Tuesday-themed party to benefit the New Haven Free Public Library (NHFPL) in its 121st year.
From NHFPL board members and patrons such as Watley to library lovers, supporters, and users, several hundred people thronged the festive Lawn Club ballroom in a library love fest. The event’s aim was not only to raise money (of course!) but to celebrate the crucial educational and democratic role the library plays in the life of the city.
Having raised $1.1 million in a recently completed capital campaign, which enabled the library to finish the new Courtland Seymour Wilson Branch in the Hill and to expand hours generally, the NHFPL is on a roll under the leadership of City Librarian James Welbourne, board Chair Brad Gallant, and Michael Morand, president of the fundraising arm of the library, the Patrons, who initiated the Mardi Gras gala tradition in 1999.
Welborne was delighting in the company of Yale University Librarian Alice Prochaska. She was the recipient of the NHFPL’s Noah Webster Award in recognition of her — and Yale’s — work with the city’s librarians to advance literacy and lifelong learning.
Right before the Funky Butt (sic) Jazz Band threw the party into high, cut-a-rug, pre-Lenten dance mode, Welbourne and Gallant reported that over the last six months, the library’s branches together received 360,000 visitors; circulated 160,000 books and other items. It grew the one half million-book collection by 14,000 additional books and other media items.
In addition to honoring Prochaska, the library gave two local organizations, Read to Grow and the New Haven Reads Community Book Bank, special awards commending them for advancing the reading lives of people, quite literally from birth.
Read to Grow (its director of development Jean Caron is to the right of bemasqued 16-year veteran librarian Nancy Guzman and Susannne Santangelo, the executive director) is a statewide nonprofit. One of its many programs, Books for Babies, provides books, guides, packets on the important of reading to kids to 50 percent of all the babies born in the state, about 21,000. They began ten years ago in pediatric wards at Yale and Saint Raphael’s. Last year they distributed 80,000 new, donated, and gently used books to kids of all ages across the state.
The library’s other honoree, New Haven Reads — its executive director Chris Alexander (pictured below) was brave enough to pose beside architect Bill MacMullen and his genuine tin Mardi Gras gold-tipped nose – was the library’s partner in the Big Read. It currently tutors 230 kids out of its Bristol Street headquarters. By the way, more than 100 other kids are on the waiting list for a tutor.
What will the library be celebrating at Mardi Gras 2009? Brad Gallant said they were very pleased with how the library’s new programs have reached out to young people. A new challenge is to get its services to the elderly. “It’s great that we have the book mobile back in action,” he said. He added he’d like to have the library have a regular presence out at Bella Vista.
When Bill MacMullen takes off his classic Mardi Gras face, he is working on the latest library addition. It’s called the Ives Transition Center, and it will be an indoor/outdoor 1500 square-foot space atop the 1988 addition to the main library. “It’s going to be green, full of nifty computers,” he explained, “and with features and programs to attract Baby Boomers.” (The long nose, he explained, originally comes from the Middle Ages, from the time of the bubonic plague, when the tin mask, it was thought, would protect from the disease and the long nose enable the examiner to look at the buboes, or the telltale signs of the plague.)
With major support for the Mardi Gras gala from Yale University, United Illuminating, Citizens Bank, and the Bank of America, among others, Barbara Segaloff, the development director, said the NHFPL was coming close to achieving the $60,000 goal of the event. Those interested in helping it to get over the top can call Segaloff at the library: 946‑8130, ext. 314.