WINDSOR TERRACE — A neighborhood library that's a crucial resource for a diverse community has won $10,000 in a citywide contest, but local officials are hoping for an even bigger funding win in this year's city budget.
The Windsor Terrace branch of the Brooklyn Public Library was a runner-up in the NYC Neighborhood Library Awards, which honored New York's best libraries by handing out $20,000 to five winners and $10,000 to five runners-up, officials with the awards program announced recently.
The extra money will come in handy.
In the executive budget that Mayor Bill de Blasio released earlier this month, the city cut $10 million from the operating budgets for the city’s three library systems and proposed a capital budget "that is not sufficient to address the challenges presented by the systems' aging infrastructure," a spokeswoman for Brooklyn Public Library said.
A spokeswoman for de Blasio noted that the mayor recently added an additional $300 million in capital funding for libraries to his executive budget, bringing the total amount of capital funds for the three library systems to $900 million over the next ten years.
The city's three library systems — New York, Brooklyn and Queens — are calling for $65 million to be restored to their operating budgets so they can stay open six days a week, as well as $1.4 billion in capital funding to undo years of financial neglect and spending cuts, the spokeswoman said.
In its response to the mayor's preliminary budget, the City Council has also called on the mayor to increase library funding.
"Libraries are fundamental public institutions that we have a duty to robustly (and more equally) support," said City Councilman Brad Lander in a statement. "The Windsor Terrace Library, including its great staff, diverse users and team of dedicated volunteers, expertly demonstrates the role libraries can play in connecting our communities.”
The NYC Neighborhood Library Awards received more than 13,000 nominations from fans of local libraries. Library users nominated their branches by submitting descriptions of how their branch helps people in their community. A panel of judges including authors Jonathan Safran Foer and Maira Kalman chose the winners.
A library lover who nominated the Windsor Terrace branch described how the library taught his nieces to read and helped his mother learn how to write a memoir. "We treasure our branch," wrote a nominator named Heath. "Our library enriches three generations of my family on a weekly basis.”
Grace Loew, a teacher from P.S. 130, credited the library with creating "lifelong readers" who beg their parents to visit the library so they can discover new books. The library is right across the street from P.S. 130, which doesn't have its own library, so students rely heavily on the branch, Loew said.
"It gives us this connection between school and the kids’ homes and the broader community,” Loew said in a video produced for the contest.
The $10,000 prize can be spent on anything the library wants, but officials haven't yet decided how the money will be spent, a spokesman for Brooklyn Public Library said.
