Caroline Donick says there”™s a common misperception among the public about libraries.
“They think that publishers send us books gratis.”
The director of the Desmond-Fish Library in Garrison says, “Many people don”™t realize that libraries have to buy their books.”
Funding is difficult for libraries because of government cutbacks, says Donick, a Foundation for Hudson Valley Libraries board member and former co-president of the Directors Association of the Mid-Hudson Library System.
About the cutbacks, Donick laments, “It”™s happening at a time when people need libraries the most,” referring to the high unemployment rate.
The Desmond-Fish Library is primarily supported by donations, fundraisers and a modest endowment from the late founders, Hamilton Fish Sr. and Alice Curtis Desmond. The Fish grandson and namesake is the library”™s board president.
In these days of zero-carbon footprints, “Libraries are good for ecology, because the same book gets passed from person to person,” Donick says.
She is enthusiastic about her library”™s ability to offer a shared collection of e-books that can be read on an e-reader, a mobile electronic device. “It is light and adjusts print to different sizes.”
The library set up summer sessions on Friday and Saturday afternoons at which a cybrarian, or technical librarian, aids with technical matters. “Patrons can”™t just drop off equipment,” Donick says. “The program is educational so that they work with the cybrarian
But, even with technology now incorporated into library services, Donick predicts that books will be around “for a very long time.”
The library director still treasures a letter received from a man who patronized the library recently ”“ a gentleman enrolled in the alcohol and drug rehabilitation program at Graymoor”™s St. Christopher”™s Inn. “He wrote that his library visits helped him in his efforts to achieve sobriety and think of himself again as an intellectual person who continues to grow intellectually.” Donick says he even sent a few books for the library”™s collection.
She met a major challenge after Tropical Storm Lee ripped through the area on a Sunday in late August 2011. She set out early Monday from her LaGrangeville home to inspect the library. Relieved to find the grounds and first floor undamaged, she ventured into the basement where a book sale had been in progress, viewing in horror several inches of water soaking cartons of books.
With the custodian and volunteers arriving with sump pumps, damage was minimized. “Fortunately, it was the second weekend of the sale,” she consoles herself, “and the most precious books were elevated on tables.”
Donick was born to a Navy family that moved every several years along the Atlantic coast from Boston to Norfolk. She earned a bachelor”™s degree from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and married her college sweetheart, James Donick. His subsequent IBM job took them to Paris. He was subsequently named head representative of IBM to the Soviet Union, and she worked in the library of the Anglo-American School in Moscow serving children from 20-plus nations.
After earning a master”™s degree in library science from Southern Connecticut State University, she became director of the Easton (Conn.) Public Library, involved in planning and fundraising when the board learned the library didn”™t meet the building code and embarked on construction of a new library. When the Donick family, by then numbering four, moved to Dutchess County, she became director of the Pleasant Valley Library before coming to Garrison in l996.
The Donicks daughter, Ann Somerset of Alexandria, Va., is a retired foreign service officer and mother of two. Their son, Michael, father of twins, is with Toyota in Japan.
Challenging Careers focuses on the exciting and unusual business lives of Hudson Valley residents. Comments or suggestions may be e-mailed to Catherine Portman-Laux at cplaux@optonline.net.Â
