Library Director making the move to Montauk
Library Director Denise DiPaolo, right, at the circulation desk, with Alice Roggie, Laura Dickerson, Arleen West and Katherine Garrison.
The summer Denise DiPaolo was four years old she was ushered into an enchanted place.
It was love at first sight. And love at first smell, too.
Enrolled in a summer reading program at the Commack Branch of the Smithtown Public Library, she fell in love with the library staff and “all the books, the smell of the books and the staircase to the children’s department.”
The soon-to-be departed director of the Shelter Island Public Library hasn’t lost that sense of a library being a charmed place, especially when she sees children in her library “coming in and finding a special spot, their own place here.”
After seven years as the library’s director, Denise DiPaolo will be finding a new enchanted place, leaving December 12 to take the helm of the Montauk Library.
She leaves with mixed emotions. “The feelings are hard to describe,” she said. “It’s similar to when I came here, when I was very happy and content with the place I was leaving.”
Ms. DiPaolo, a Sag Harbor resident, had been at Southampton’s Roger’s Memorial Library for five years before taking the Island post.
“Knowing I was coming here to an unknown community, I was excited but also a bit nervous,” she said.
The Montauk Library is a civil service institution and has the advantage of providing a pension and tenure track, which was an attractive package, Ms. DiPaolo said.
But there was a confluence of the offer of more financial security and a life-changing event that clinched the deal in her mind to make the move.
For more than a year, Ms. DiPaolo was the primary caregiver to her younger brother, Michael, who suffered with late-stage melanoma. Included in her duties to her brother were regular trips to Sloan Kettering in Manhattan for his therapies, including RMIs, PET scans and chemotherapy. Michael died in September.
“When he passed, and I was offered this position, I thought, there’s a reason, there are no coincidences and one door was closing and another was opening.”
She assessed the situation on Shelter Island and saw a smooth running operation “with a great board, a great staff and tremendous support from Friends of the Library and the community. I thought: They’ll be fine.”
The Board of Trustees had “reluctantly accepted” Ms. DiPaolo’s resignation, 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.
The upsides of the Montauk Library position include managing a larger facility and the opportunity to enhance its services — exactly the kind of challenge she took on when she came to Shelter Island.
“She has a boundless enthusiasm for making the library an integral and important part of the Shelter Island community,” Ms. Robotti said. 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.
Ms. DiPaolo counts several accomplishments here, she said, including an extensive renovation project and “the way the community embraced the library over the last seven years. People are comfortable here. We’ve a very social library. People feel warm and welcome. That’s rewarding.”
