The Wayland Library, 2000-2023: a Memoir
Andy Moore
When I applied for the position of part-time reference librarian at the Library late in 1997, I didn’t even know where Wayland was. I had probably seen the name on a highway sign, then forgotten it immediately. As a resident of Brookline, my acquaintance with Massachusetts beyond Route 128 was limited to Walden Pond and occasional trips to the Pioneer Valley and the Berkshires. However, I was on the verge of getting my master’s degree in library science from Simmons College and needed a job. A friend of mine had seen the position advertised in the newspaper and given me the clipped ad. I duly submitted a letter and resume.
At the time, I was in a Dixieland band with Bill Zimmerman, who had recently retired after many years as superintendent of the Wayland schools. When I told him about my application, he said (with characteristic bluntness), “For Chrissake, Andy! Why didn’t you tell me you were applying? I’ve known Louise Brown for years. I’ll put in a word for you.” (Only much later did I learn just how gracious this gesture was, as Bill and Louise didn’t always get along.) Soon after that, I got a call from Louise, the Library Director. “You don’t really have the experience the Town is looking for,” she said, “but if you want to come in and talk, we can talk.” Figuring it never hurts to talk, I agreed to come in.
Louise and I talked for an hour and a half. We talked about books and movies and families and who knows what else. When some of us on the library staff, years later, were exchanging hiring stories, Ann Knight, who was Louise’s Assistant Director, said, “I kept passing by the office, eavesdropping, and I wondered if you were ever going to talk about the job.” We did, at some point, but so casually, it seems, that when Louise called me later that week to offer me the position, I asked her if it came with benefits. It had occurred to neither of us to bring the subject up in the interview. It was now mid-December. She asked me when I could start, and I told her that I’d be going out of town shortly for the holidays, and could start right after New Year’s Day. But I was thinking of taking another two weeks to see friends and family out west whom I hadn’t seen in some years. Would that be possible? “Well,” she said, “we’d really like to get someone up on the desk as soon as we can,” so we agreed to the earlier start date.
A few days later, she called again and said, “You know, we’ve been limping along well enough, so a little while longer won’t kill us. Why don’t you go ahead and take that trip.”
This was typical of Louise, and typical of her library. By that time, she’d been there for thirty-one years, twenty-one as Director. She had overseen the construction of a new wing, and brought the library into the age of automation as a charter member of the Minuteman Library Network. Virtually the entire staff had been hired by her, and the culture that had arisen reflected her kindness, generosity, and warmth. After learning that this was my first real library job, one of my new colleagues said to me, “I have to tell you, I’ve worked in a lot of places, and this place is extraordinary.” So I discovered. Everyone seemed to like each other. If they didn’t, they kept it to themselves; I heard no gossip or backbiting. Staff birthdays were celebrated with cake, baked or bought by whomever had drawn the celebrant’s name out of a hat, and we also had a party for anyone who left, since it seemed to happen so infrequently (many a staffer’s tenure stretched into double digits). Anything having to do with children (sickness, parent/teacher conference, school day change) was accommodated with a shift coverage or schedule adjustment. Colleagues on vacation usually sent a postcard, and returned with a treat peculiar to their vacation locale. The annual holiday party–no spouses or partners, and held after the holidays to ensure maximum participation–was a potluck dinner in someone’s home, and was eagerly anticipated and genuinely enjoyed as a chance to hang out together without the distractions of those pesky library patrons and their needs.
Joking aside, the patrons always came first. That ethic was at the heart of the Library culture, and a point of pride among the staff. We bragged about the patrons from other towns who confessed that they liked us better than their own libraries, and we cheered on colleagues who chased down patrons in the parking lot with a book that had been found after the patrons had given up looking. It was understood that a conversation between co-workers would be cut off mid-sentence if a patron needed help, and that the person in front of the desk took precedence over the person on the phone. One night, a mother and young son rushed in right at closing time in search of a particular book about building a car for the Pinewood Derby (a model-car race). We were the only library that owned it and they had come from another town to get it. Generally, we were strict about closing time (Town protocol, as well as our desire to get home), but that night the staffer held the building open until the book was found and checked out. A few weeks later, mother and son returned in high spirits to report that the boy’s car had won the Derby. Another golden tale to add to our book of legends.
Over time, I also came to see how thoroughly the library was woven into the fabric of the town. There were any number of young patrons of the Children’s Room whose parents had frequented it as children themselves. (Many of them fondly recalled the redoubtable Ann Flowers, who was hired around the same time as Louise Brown. Ann had been long retired when I started, but she came in now and then, a forceful but jovial woman with the presence of someone who had a national reputation in her profession.) The Noon Book Group had been meeting monthly since at least the mid-1960s (not with the same members). Many staff members, including Louise, lived in town. At one point, three members of the same Wayland family were laboring under the library roof. George Lewis, a retired geography professor and native son who had written two books about the town, was organizing the archive of historical materials as a volunteer; his daughter, Pam Sway, was the Assistant Children’s Librarian; and Pam’s teenage son, Hank, was a library page, emptying the book drop and shelving books. One of Pam’s other sons later married April Mazza, the Children’s Librarian, which meant that Pam was working for her daughter-in-law (they got along famously).
Though the Board of Library Trustees wasn’t involved in day-to-day library affairs, the trustees were familiar to the staff, one of them especially. Perry Hagenstein was a lanky, silver-haired forestry expert who was active in many walks of Wayland life. He served as a trustee for years, occasionally as Chair. You could find him at the Library almost every day, ostensibly to read the newspaper, but just as much, I think, to be with us. He was easygoing and, eyes twinkling, often on the verge of laughter. For all of his considerable accomplishments in life, he was utterly unpretentious: the kind of person who used to be referred to as “an old shoe.” It was always a pleasure to see him, and talk to him, and enjoy his good fellowship. If a municipal institution can be said to have a father figure, Perry was ours. His death in 2008 at 77 was a profound loss, and he is still missed.
(My own bond with Perry was based on our shared Minnesota roots. It was part of an odd Wayland Library-Minnesota nexus that I learned about shortly after being hired. Helen Hagenauer, the Technical Services librarian, had a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the U of M. Ann Knight had met her husband, a native of White Bear Lake, MN, at Carleton College. And Sue Decker, the colleague who had lauded the library to me, poked her head in the door of the Staff Room one day while I was having lunch, and said, “I understand you’re from Edina, Minnesota. I spent three of the happiest years of my life there.” [Her husband worked for Honeywell.] Having fond feelings for my homeland, I couldn’t help but think that all of this meant I was in the right place.)
Initially, my responsibilities were limited to helping patrons find what they needed. Once Ann Knight, who bought the compact discs, discovered my love of jazz, she assigned me that section of the collection. Sometime after that, we were talking one day about how laborious and time-consuming it could be to order CDs, as I sat at the Reference Desk and she stood with an armful of catalogs and printouts. I might have indicated that I thought it actually seemed rather fun, because she suddenly said, “Here–you do it!,” dumped the catalogs on the desk, and fled. Over the years, I expanded the collection from roughly 600 discs to 6000, creating new categories and designing six cabinets that we commissioned from a local woodworker. It was long one of the prides of the Library, frequently praised by patrons, until the CD era came to a close with the advent of digital streaming.
As has been noted elsewhere in this book, the Library has always kept up with the times. We had an excellent collection of videotapes, both feature films and non-fiction, which was smoothly displaced by DVDs, just as books on tape gave way to books on CD (which many patrons persisted in calling “books on tape.” We knew what they meant). We currently subscribe to a number of popular streaming services. When the Minuteman Library Network started exploring the possibility of offering ebooks around 2008, our Head of Circulation was on the original committee charged with finding a vendor. Once Overdrive had been selected, the committee turned into a working group that chose the titles for the entire network. We were part of that, too, one of just seven members.
The rise of the Internet has meant–not just here but across the world of libraries–the decline of the reference section. Where it once commanded whole stacks, it now sits forlornly on a few shelves. I remember how excited we were to buy the Grove Dictionary of Art, and the American National Biography, pricey multi-volume sets, handsomely bound, that replaced decrepit equivalents, at least one of them from the 1940s. They themselves have now been weeded. But, in the words of the great librarian S. R. Ranganathan, “The library is a growing organism.”
Louise Brown retired in 2003, amid worthy pomp and celebration, and Ann Knight became the new Director. This may look suspiciously like royal succession, but Ann was one of several candidates who interviewed for the job. As one of my colleagues, who was on the search committee, put it, “Even if we didn’t love her, she was easily the most qualified.” Ann had been at the Library since 1995, starting, like me, as a part-time reference librarian before becoming Assistant Director. As one of Louise’s hires, she was well equipped to maintain the Library’s famously friendly atmosphere and tradition of superb customer service. She was steadfast in her devotion to the Library and to her staff, always lending a receptive ear to their ideas and observations. She had a cheerful, calm assurance and a signature laugh. And she was so easy to talk to. In the days when she and I had successive shifts on the reference desk, our changing of the guard could last half an hour, as we caught up not just on Library matters, but our lives.
One challenge Ann, and the Library, faced came in 2008 when the roof on both the 1987 North Wing and the original 1900 building needed to be replaced. The former project was completed but the latter had to be postponed when one of four rafters in the attic was found to be cracked, and the others considerably stressed. For more than two months, the repair forced us to close the main floor until 3 p.m. during weekdays and set up makeshift operations in the Raytheon Room in the basement. It was awkward, but we learned what we could do in a pinch, and the patrons were supportive and patient.
The Library encountered a far more serious setback in March 2010. Two powerful rainstorms swelled the wetlands behind the library building, sending water into the lower parking lot. A third storm on March 28 flooded the lower lot completely. On March 30, the waters crested and–despite yeoman efforts by our custodian, Valdo Goncalves–overwhelmed the small pump, rushing through the doors and rising up through the floor. Within minutes, the entire first floor, which included the offices, Technical Services, Raytheon Room, and Children’s Room, was under two inches of water.
Fortunately, the Children’s Room staff, in anticipation, had moved all the books that were on bottom shelves to higher ones. No books could stay in the room, however, or they’d be ruined by mildew and rot. Thus, a clutch of Library staff members and many members of the Friends of the Library, some in Wellington-style boots, formed a bucket brigade stretching from the Children’s Room up the staff stairs to the North Wing, and passed the books and computers up to safety. We lost only four books, dropped accidentally.
The library building was closed for five months while the first floor was gutted to the studs and rebuilt. At first, we were all at home. It was made clear to us that if we wanted to go somewhere, we could use our vacation time, but otherwise we had to stick around. I certainly had no complaints at first, but, as the world has discovered in the last few years, staying home isn’t the lark you think it would be when you have nowhere to go. I was glad, after a month, when we started going in rotation to Minuteman’s Central Site in Natick to check in and gather up our items that were being returned from other libraries. I was even gladder when we could leave behind the drab confines of Central Site and return to our own lovely, light-filled home.
The library building is an architectural gem. The rotunda, with its enormous windows, and the spaciousness of the main floor make the building seem larger than it really is. Two giant white columns form a portal to the rotunda, which is ornamented with intricate plaster molding and a frieze inspired by Donatello. (It was crafted by an Italian artisan named P. P. Caproni, who called it “Dancing Boys” and charged the Town $115.) The rotunda’s fireplaces and hardwood floor contribute a sense, if not the actual sensation, of warmth (the fireplaces aren’t up to code). A graceful, wrought-iron catwalk bridges the space between the east and west mezzanines. The North Wing tastefully augments the original structure, which clearly stems from an era when the design of public buildings reflected pride in civic institutions and faith in their importance.
But well before the flood, it was clear to many that the building was no longer the best place for a library. (Nor was the site, obviously, the best place for a building, as the original Building Committee had observed.) A host of drawbacks, including a lack of study rooms, limited shelf space, and a single conference room that was cramped and windowless, kept the Library from meeting the needs of 21st-century patrons. A 2005 study by an architectural firm determined that there was no way to expand on the current site. Many more years of studies, surveys, planning, and heated debate within the community ensued before the decision to build was put to a vote at Town Meeting on April 2, 2018, with the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners poised to contribute more than $10 million to the project. After a tense procedure marred by a fractious atmosphere and mechanical difficulties with the voting apparatus, the article received 61% in favor, short of the 66% needed to pass.
Ann Knight retired in 2016, but was part of the team that assembled the massive application for the MBLC building grant. She was succeeded in 2017 by Assistant Director Sandy Raymond, who first joined the staff as a reference librarian in 2003. Sandy’s irrepressible humor was matched by her passionate concern for the Library in all its aspects. Working with her often put me in mind of a remark made about Abraham Lincoln by his law partner: “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.” Substitute “dedication” for “ambition” and you’ve perfectly described Sandy’s approach to her job. A planner and problem solver by nature, she had already made important improvements to the Library space, including the creation of study areas where none had existed. She was constantly on the lookout for ways–ideas, programs, resources–to better the Library experience for patrons and staff, and boost the Library’s profile in the community. As Director, she advocated tirelessly for the Library to the Town administration. There was never a sense of personal aggrandizement in these efforts. On the contrary, Sandy hated the limelight, but never shied from speaking up on behalf of the Library.
The particular Director’s challenge reserved for Sandy was nothing less than a worldwide pandemic. As COVID-19 took hold in the United States, the Library shut down on Sunday, March 15, 2020. Staff, however, continued to work from home (except for Tech Librarian Tyler Kenney, who was deployed to the Town Building, along with our two 3D printers, to print face masks for first responders). In the years since the flood, the Library website had come to figure much more prominently in our outreach efforts. Now, as our only means of contact with the public, it became the focus of our attention, promoting virtual programs and daily posts of Internet links that we hoped would be diverting to a housebound world. In June, skeleton crews returned to the building on a rotating basis and began “curbside pickup” service, stapling up holds in paper bags and putting them out on a set of shelves by the parking-lot door. (This service proved so popular that by the time we fully reopened, we were averaging 1,800 bags a month. Some patrons are still picking up curbside, nearly three years later.) All staff were back in the building in August, and in September we started having “pop-up” libraries in the parking lot on nice days. We’d wheel out five or six carts of materials and set up a table with a computer and barcode scanner. It was fun for patrons and staff alike. The novelty took the edge off the necessity.
In October, patrons were allowed back into the building, a few at a time, by appointment, at certain times, on certain days. It was the first tentative step in a scheme that unfolded as a continual improvisation, with Sandy and the staff assessing and adapting services as conditions and demands changed, sometimes on a daily basis. There were virtually no missteps; we moved slowly but steadily forward, without ever having to roll back services.
Gradually, over the next eight months, the strictures were relaxed until June 2021, when–to the relief of all–the Library reopened for business as usual. Though the pandemic had been considerably quelled by new vaccines, signs of it lingered: staff and patrons continued to wear masks for some time, and programs had many more remote attendees than live ones. Foot traffic never fully rebounded. Circulation, however, not only returned to its previous levels but surpassed them, thanks to the exploding popularity of ebooks and streaming services.
As of this writing in March 2023, the library building is slated to undergo a $2.4 million renovation of essential functions. The plan calls for the bad-tempered 1987 HVAC system to be replaced and the septic system connected to the town’s sewer system. The elevator, restrooms, and mezzanines will be made more accessible to those with mobility issues. The tiered space in the Children’s Room will be eliminated, along with the tumbles that have been taken in it. The entryway from the parking lot–which has long replaced the original front doorway as the main entry to the building, despite being approximately the size of a postage stamp–will be expanded and made more accessible and welcoming to all.
Among the staff, there are only two of us left who were hired by Louise Brown. The Library is, in many respects, very different from when we started working here, as it should be (see: Ranganathan). The essentials, however, haven’t changed: collegiality prevails among the staff. We look to the future, not the past, the extensive history recounted in this volume notwithstanding. And whatever disruptions the coming renovation may entail, I’m completely confident that customer service will remain the watchword.
It’s still an extraordinary place.