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MONROE: Irene Goldberg Librarian of the Year

By David Kilby, Staff Writer
   MONROE — Irene Goldberg, who is the New Jersey Library Association’s 2011 Librarian of the Year, became Monroe’s librarian before the township really even had a library.
   Ms. Goldberg, who commutes from East Brunswick, started her job at Monroe Public Library in the fall of 1988 with just a card table and a folding chair.
   ”That’s not a folklore,” she said. “The card table has fallen apart, but I still have the folding chair. There was carpeting on the floor, and there was me.”
   She said Mayor Richard Pucci was elected 24 years ago because the citizens trusted he would start a library in Monroe. Before the Monroe Library was built, Monroe residents paid Cranbury and Jamesburg for library services.
   ”Monroe, a growing and upcoming community, needed a library where everyone can come together, no matter what community they were in,” Ms. Goldberg said. “The feeling in the community was the library would serve all our needs.”
   The Library Association, a group of citizens that was formed before there was a library, had purchased some tables and chairs, and they were in the police station. The group brought the tables and chairs over to the small library building, bought shelves and started hiring people, Ms. Goldberg said.
   The township opened the library April 1, 1989, with the slogan “Monroe, you have a library, no fooling,” she added.
   ”By the time we opened, we had 10,000 registered borrowers. We didn’t bother to say ‘how long have you lived in Monroe’ or anything,” Ms. Goldberg said. “It was a popular place from the beginning.”
   The most popular items were the videos.
   ”There was not a video on the shelf at the end of the first day,” she said.
   The library also began to offer Sunday afternoon lectures about literature and the art, and many other programs the library still is known for today.
   ”We knew right away programming had to be a large part of what we did,” Ms. Goldberg said, adding the lectures always brought a large amount of people.
   ”We were told there weren’t many children in Monroe that used the library,” she said, “so we started offering storytimes, and we had several a week, and they would be full. So we created that from the ground up.”
   She said the only things members of the library pay for are fines and printing.
   ”The (library) board believes that if the library is paid by tax dollars, you already paid,” she said. “We decided philosophically that we are a free library, and we remain free.”
   She boasted of the library’s services, which are the library’s “claim to fame.”
   ”Whether it’s working through a difficult reference or navigating the state social security system, we have the staff and resources to do it,” she said. “We’ve developed first name relationships.”
   She said the Jamesburg and Cranbury public libraries also do well in their small communities, but Monroe has met the challenge of serving a large community while also providing small-town-like one-on-one services.
   Ms. Goldberg explained how she came to love libraries while sharing how they have changed since the 1950s when she was in grade school.
   She said in her childhood library in Teaneck, “You walked in, took a book and left.”
   She said the nun at the Catholic school she attended one day said to her, “You need to get a library card.”
   She said, “I was very docile and easily influenced. If the nun says to me ‘you have to go to the library,’ that afternoon I was going to the library. And I fell in love with the books, all those books I could borrow.”
   She added, “When I got older I realized that not all kids were given that opportunity.”
   She first worked in a library at her college, the College of New Rochelle in New Rochelle, New York. When people asked her if she ever thought of going to library school, she said, no, but eventually she started to look into it, “and the rest is history,” she said.
   Ms. Goldberg has three daughters in their 30s, and two of them, Celia and Beth Cackowski, are twins.
   Celia Cackowski works at the Center for Marine Life in Kingston, Rhode Island, and is a well-known speaker on marine biology, Ms. Goldberg said.
   Beth Cackowski is the QandANJ project manager, a service of the New Jersey Library Network, and manages virtual reference for the state.
   Ms. Goldberg’s oldest daughter, Kay Keaney, works in hospital administration.
   ”They’re very successful women in their own rights, and I am most proud of them,” Ms. Goldberg said.
   She said the library is working on totally revamping its web page and soon will provide a touch screen library directory where people can find out the schedule of each room in the library.
   The library staff also is working on establishing a book discussion group in the community center on Monmouth Road “and just reaching out to people more” Ms. Goldberg said.
   The library is open seven days a week and has a handful of employees who work the equivalent of 20 full-time positions. Ms. Goldberg said it is difficult to tell how many workers there are because many often come and go, and many students often are assigned community service at the library.
   ”We just try to be personal,” she said. “We try to make people think they’re welcome to stay. That’s why we have so many chairs. Many people just come here and hang out, and they see people or they see something that they didn’t know was happening. You don’t have to do anything but be here. We try to make it a home away from home. I just want the library to be the comfortable spot to go, and nobody asks when you’re leaving, except when it’s closing time.”
   The library, at 4 Municipal Drive, is open Monday through Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., Fridays from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
   She had little to say of being recognized as New Jersey Librarian of the Year other than “It’s a wonderful honor to be recognized, but I’m not a princess or a queen.”