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Librarian departing Island for Montauk post

REPORTER FILE PHOTO |Shown here at her Sag Harbor home, Shelter Island Library Director Denise DiPaolo will soon be commuting east to Montauk.
REPORTER FILE PHOTO | Shown here at her Sag Harbor home, Shelter Island Library Director Denise DiPaolo will soon be commuting east to Montauk.

After seven years as director of the Shelter Island Public Library, Denise DiPaolo will be leaving at the end of December to take the helm of the Montauk Library.

The Board of Trustees “reluctantly accepted” Ms. DiPaolo’s resignation Monday night, said its president, Jo-Ann Robotti.

“We are sorry she is leaving, but it really was, as one board member accurately said, ‘inevitable,’” Ms. Robotti said.

“It was definitely an opportunity for me,” Ms. DiPaolo said about the challenges of the Montauk job. “Shelter Island is in a very, very healthy place,” she added, explaining her decision to make a change at this time.

“We’re on a very good path,” she said. “And seven years is a long time.”

The upsides of the Montauk Library position includes managing a larger facility and it’s a civil service job that provides security, Ms. DiPaolo said. Montauk is looking to enhance its services — exactly the kind of challenge she took on when she came to Shelter Island.

Ms. Robotti noted that because Montauk is one of the few civil service libraries in the area, it can offer Ms. DiPaolo both new challenges and a compensation package “Shelter Island can never match.”

“She has a boundless enthusiasm for making the library an integral and important part of the Shelter Island community,” the board president added. Because of changes “big and small” that Ms. DiPaolo brought to Shelter Island, she has “put the library on the leading edge in terms of new trends and initiatives,” Ms. Robotti said.

Just a few months ago, Ms. DiPaolo told an interviewer she had no intention of leaving Shelter Island any time soon. But the recent death of her brother, Michael, who succumbed to melanoma, started her thinking about pursuing a new direction, she said.

This past spring Ms. DiPaolo spoke about the transition from the days when the Shelter Island Public Library was “more like a museum than a library.”

Changes in attitude started with small steps — just opening windows to let some fresh air into the building, she said.

In her first year on Shelter Island, she saw voters defeat a bond issue needed to expand the building.
Some would have looked at the loss as a defeat, but Ms. DiPaolo said it was an opportunity. She and the Board of Directors and Friends of the Library set their sights on raising money for the approximately $800,000 project and succeeded through grants and contributions.

“It was all made possible through teamwork,” Ms. DiPaolo said. “I have worked with quality individuals here.”

She and her team oversaw the major construction project started in 2012 that expanded the community room, a new entryway to the lower level and an elevator to carry patrons between the main and downstairs space. It provided the meeting space necessary to the many adult and youth programs that have become so much a part of the offerings at the Shelter Island Public Library.

A search committee of the board will be creating a job description to guide the hunt for a replacement, Ms. Robotti said.

“We are a far more attractive dance partner than we were seven years ago and are confident that a successor to Denise will be found who will carry on the great work she started,” Ms. Robotti said.