Island Profile: Librarian lands in perfect place at the perfect time

Denise DiPaolo is one happy librarian.

“I feel like it’s a really exciting time in the world of the Shelter Island Public Library! We’ve got a great project ahead of us. We’ve raised over $540,000 towards our $700,000 development goal and there’s a great vibe in this building now. I feel like it was already great when I walked in here — the staff is so incredibly talented, the board is very professional and committed. It’ s been nothing but progress from day one.”

Denise was born in Queens, the second of five children but the oldest girl. Soon the family moved to Commack and later Smithtown, where she went to school and graduated from Smithtown West in 1983. She attended SUNY Brockport for one semester. “I just wasn’t ready to leave the nest so I came home and went to Suffolk Community College,” she said, where she got an associate’s degree and transferred to SUNY Albany, where she was an English major with a minor in business and graduated in 1988.

She married in 1989 and had three children in four and a half years. Janet was born in 1990, Jimmy in 1992 and Jake (John) in 1994. During those years she was a graduate student and in 1991 received her Master of Science degree from Long Island University, C. W. Post College, in library and information science. “We had a lovely home in Great River, but things just went awry. So upon divorce I scooped up my three children and moved out east with them and raised them as a single mom.”

Divorced, she settled in Sag Harbor, enrolled her children in the public school there and for several years, from 1997 to 2001, worked for a television production company that produced a PBS syndicated show, “Living It Up,” a style show, complete with gardening, traveling and cooking. The company folded after 9/11. “But my time there taught me a lot about marketing, as well as skills for fund-raising,” which were to come in handy later on.

Although she was “moonlighting” as a teacher’s assistant at Sag Harbor’s Pierson High School, she needed a full-time job and basically, as she put it, “I just cold called and went over to Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton and asked if they were looking for anyone and they were, for a director of teen services. That was right up my alley, and I said ‘I’ll take it!’ and that was the beginning of a very satisfying career.”

She spent a lot of time developing the department at Rogers, as well as developing a rapport with the teenage community in Southampton, a very diverse and challenging one. When Rogers decided it was going to “migrate,” become part of the Partnership of Automated Libraries (PAL) system, and go from being a “stand-alone library” to an affiliated one, the responsibility for the changeover fell to her.

“When you’re a part of PAL, you are connected. Your circulation system, your inter-library loan system, is all automated. You’re connected to all of the 52 libraries in Suffolk County, making it easier for your patrons to get items faster, even the very next day. But it’s a huge project to migrate a stand-alone library to a PAL library. It can take up to a year, depending on the size of your collection.” In effect, she had become the library coordinator.

“So we migrated and it was smooth sailing and then in 2007 I saw the posting for the position here. I was coming off a great high, a successful migration, my own kids were doing great, and this looked like a really great position.” But she thought this was a stand-alone library, and didn’t think she could go back and tackle that same task again. “I didn’t know that Laura Dickerson, a library staff member, had already started the ball rolling. When I learned that, I applied.” She was hired and began work in March 2008.

“And I’m still happy, still satisfied. I’m loving my job and loving this community. I tell people all the time I have the most magical commute in the world, from Sag Harbor to Shelter Island; I have the best of both worlds.” She’s full of praise for her co-workers as well. “The enthusiasm, the team effort, the talented staff, a great board — that’s a formula for success.” Recently she became a member of the Lions Club and joined the board of the Shelter Island Chamber of Commerce. She’s looking forward to this Saturday’s Book and Author Festival, scheduled for 2 p.m. “under the tent” on the library grounds.

Her personal life is in third gear as well. “My youngest son is going to be a senior in high school this year. My middle son will be a sophomore at Fairfield University, where he’s a varsity rower,” and her daughter Janet will be a senior there. She has a 4.0 average in math. She’ll soon be taking the Graduate Record Exams and applying for a higher degree.

“So after my children flew the coop, my youngest is living with his dad in Great River, he wanted less of country life, and he’s doing well, I suddenly had a glimmer of the empty nest.” In short order, she “acquired a very handsome live-in boyfriend and his dog. That’s Dennis Fabizak, a fellow librarian, director of the East Hampton Library. So we travel in professional and personal circles together” and she’s clearly delighted with her life, with her work and with this Island.