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“When the North Arlington Library closes as night, it’s dark," said new Library Director Kristin Nelson. "Here, I always see people passing on the street.”
"This is the nucleus of the town,” said Glitza Rojas Gutierrez, the community outreach librarian at the Anderson Avenue facility.A borough native, Gutierrez left a corporate career in the financial sector in Manhattan to be closer to her children.
“We know all of our patrons and we get to follow them throughout their educational or informational pursuits,” she said.
She and Nelson have paired up to boost the library's Hispanic Heritage Month participation. As part of a film screening series, they chose the movies "Cantinflas," "Frida" and "Devil’s Backbone." They're also planning Halloween parties and Day of the Dead celebrations. Several patrons have been borrowing materials, picking up files and searching through an entirely Spanish section of the catalog.
Both women hope to help connect users to the 12,000,000 items in the BCCLS system -- available to 600,000 registered patrons.
“We’ve seen the cultural and social changes happen with the availability of music, movies and audiobooks,” Nelson said. “There is a chunk of the population that it is here [who] don’t know what is being offered."I don’t ever want to be the hidden gem. We want to find the people who don’t know about us.”
“We want incite pride and build curiosity in patrons so that they can learn about these Hispanic artists and authors,” Gutierrez added.
The two set up a booth at the Fairview school district's most recent back to school night, seeking counsel from parents and teachers about upcoming projects.
In addition to the students, Nelson and Guitierrez hope to help the unemployed and retirees find the resources they seek.
“We’re still trying to figure out if there is a demand for seniors to learn things on the computers," Nelson said. "We’re advertising, but we’re not sure if it is there.”
MORE INFO: http://fairview.bccls.org/staff-trustees.php
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