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The New Rochelle Public Library: The Real Story

An article headlined “Rowdiness forces libraries to react” recently published in another Westchester County newspaper may have been misleading to who read it. The article correctly noted that the New Rochelle Public Library has installed surveillance cameras, but wrongly assumed that this action was in response to an unsubstantiated increase in disruptive behavior. The paper cited police reports for 2009, but failed to investigate year-over-year statistics, thus providing no evidence for the basis of its story.

In fact, the NRPL Board of Trustees made the decision to install surveillance cameras inside and outside the main library building, not in response to an increase of crime, emergency medical service, suspicious activity or disruptive behavior (all reasons for contacting the police), but rather, as part of an ongoing, pro-active effort to improve security for an ever increasing number of patrons.

While the article’s headline lacked a story, I do think the New Rochelle Public Library has a story to tell that our local media have failed to report.
Usage at the New Rochelle Public Library is increasing dramatically, and the Library is responding. In the last year a Computer Training Lab was created and a 6 computer work space was added to our enlarged Teen area, augmenting the 20 existing computers for our patrons without internet access or in need of such access downtown. A total rewiring and electrical upgrade of the main library building has just been completed which will result in 30 more computers available for internet access within the next two months. Music listening and downloading, a library offering not imagined just a few years ago, is now available with the establishment in 2009 of the state of the art Bliss Music Center featuring over 3,200 music CDs. Meanwhile, the NRPL’s core mission of loaning books, and DVDs and audio books, has increased over 21% from 518,000 titles in 2007 to 631,000 last year. Children’s book lending continues to break records, just behind Yonkers, a city three times our size. Our unique Huguenot Children’s Library was just remodeled. And the New Rochelle Public Library’s free programs have more than doubled since 2007: book discussion groups, homework help for our children, English language classes for our adults, dance performances, art exhibits, story times for youngsters, craft workshops, film lectures; and much needed job search assistance in the Handleman Business Opportunity Center; and free tax preparation assistance again this tax season with volunteers from the AARP.

These difficult economic times place greater demands on our public libraries and on our beleaguered property taxpayer, the principal source of funding for public libraries. The New Rochelle Public Library’s Trustees have remained ever sensitive to the stress on the city’s property taxpayers: full-time staff has actually been reduced from 42 in 2005 to 35 in 2009, and of the 38 public libraries in Westchester, New Rochelle’s per capita public spending is the 6th lowest. Without the tremendous support of the NRPL Foundation, Friends of the Library, Partnership for the Huguenot Children’s Library, as well as Philanthropic and state and county grants, the New Rochelle Public Library could not have responded as well as it has to the increased needs of our patrons. Now that’s a story worth reading.

Gregory T. Varian
Vice-president
NRPL Board of Trustees

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