By Ed Karvoski Jr., Contributing Writer
Marlborough – Kat Ealy immediately felt comfortable upon her first visit to the Marlborough Public Library. Now, she’s the new children’s librarian.
“It’s so friendly and welcoming here,” she said of the children’s room. “It’s a place where you want to be and hang out with your friends or parents.”
She recently joined the staff after working for two years as the youth services librarian at Lawrence Library in Pepperell.
“Pepperell is lovely and the library is a wonderful community hub, but it’s a very small town,” she said. “Being here in Marlborough has the potential for me to help a lot more people.”
A perk of the new job is a reduced commute time. She lives in Clinton with her husband Alvin, who is the adult services librarian at Gale Free Library in Holden.
“I was commuting about 45 minutes; now it’s about 20,” she explained. “It’s really nice to be able to sit and have my coffee at the table in the morning instead of trying to drink it while I’m driving.”
In Pepperell, she was responsible for a wider age range of library patrons. She appreciates the more focused job description of children’s librarian.
“I was working with children and teens; here, I’m working only with children,” she noted. “I enjoyed working with first grade through high school, but I like the idea that I’ll be able to specialize on a smaller age range. It’s a vast difference even from elementary to middle school. Now, I can concentrate on first through fifth grades.”
Ealy fondly remembers frequent visits to the library as a child with her mother while growing up in Rockaway, N.J.
“I have two older sisters and this was the time for just the two of us – and it was a very happy time,” she shared. “That’s when I got her all to myself.”
She cites a particular library visit as her favorite.
“My strongest memory is sitting on my mother’s lap at story time on Halloween,” she recalled. “We were both in costumes and listening to scary stories. Whenever something spooky happened, she would hug me.”
Even at a young age, reading books figuratively became her passport out of Rockaway.
“I learned that books can really take you wherever you want to go,” she said. “You can go to a jungle, you can go to Europe, and you can go to the moon. You can open a book and find yourself transported to somewhere else.”
Ealy earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Rutgers University, and a master’s degree in library and information science at Simmons College. She was a page in the Manatee County Public Library System in Florida prior to working in Pepperell.
“I learned a lot from my job in Pepperell,” she said. “I was able to take some great risks and I now know some programs that will work well.”
A potentially risky program she introduced in Pepperell was lending young patrons items that are not typically available to be borrowed at a library such as board games, American Girl dolls and science equipment including microscopes. Based on its success, she’s hoping to offer a similar program in Marlborough.
“It’s like ‘test driving’ a toy,” she explained half-jokingly. “We found that people were so excited to have these items that they took wonderful care of them. They treated them with a lot of love and respect.”
Ealy is open to suggestions for other new programs.
“We’re trying to reach every segment of the population that we can,” she said. “We want to make sure that there’s something for everybody here.”