Library Branch Popular for Personal Touch

The nondescript storefront is nestled between a restaurant and bank. Above its door and window, a blue weatherworn sign bears white letters that faintly read: “Long Beach Public Library Point Lookout Branch.” The video and book bins that stand opposite one another, the way lion statues are positioned outside other libraries, render the branch’s identity more recognizable.

Located at 26B Lido Boulevard, the library is roughly 4.8 miles from the main branch on West Park Avenue in Long Beach. But this trek doesn’t deter Julia Oberlander, a Long Beach mother who regularly takes her 6- and 7-year-old sons to the branch, sometimes for story time programs.

“It’s a very different experience,” Oberlander said about the branch. “It’s very personal and friendly. And we always have fun as a family here.”

The single-room, carpeted interior features a fiction section, large print books and a magazine rack on one wall. The other main wall sports mostly children’s books, with “Days With Frog and Toad” by Arnold Lobel opened for display on a nearby stand.

The room is divided by two-sided floor shelves that hold videos, DVDs, audio books and a biography section, where Robert Redford looks out from the cover of a book by Michael Feeny Callan. At the rear is a reading table, a desk with a Dell public access computer, and a wall lined with World Book encyclopedias.

Like its sister branch in the West End, the Point Lookout annex stocks some 10,600 items, a substantial downscale from the 161,100 items available at the main branch. “What we’re looking at is mostly popular books, popular DVDs, popular recorded books and things of that nature,” library director George Trepp said about the annex.

On a recent Saturday, a patron arrived carrying a stack of books and DVD movies under her arm to donate to the branch.

“We get a lot of donations,” said Carol Condon, a clerk who sits at an Office Max-like wooden desk where books are checked in and out.  

Later that day, Jim McCaffrey, a year-round Point Lookout resident, returned a DVD movie, “Martha Marcy May Marelne,” and Condon struck up a conversation with him about the actors.

“It’s everything you could ever want in a library,” McCaffrey said. “It’s a throwback to another time in that it has a personal touch. It’s representative of the whole town.”

Point Lookout is a hamlet with a 15-miler-per-hour speed limit and a population of about 1,200. Many New York City residents own summer homes there and help make the season the busiest at the branch.  As evidence, Condon cites computer use, which jumps from an average of 30 to 50 daily users. She estimated that as many as 400 people patronize the branch regularly.   

Matt Russo, a Lido Beach resident, is a regular on Saturdays. As he checked out numerous items, including Mary Higgins Clark novels and a SpongeBob video for his grandchildren, Russo said he rarely drives to the main library in Long Beach, finding it too impersonal and a tough place to park.

“Carole is a special gift because of her happy demeanor, knowledge of the library system and her jokes,” Russo said.

The branch opened in 1967, originally at 50 Lido Blvd., before it was transferred to its current location in 1995. “They must have decided that Point Lookout is sufficiently far away to warrant a branch,” Trepp speculated about its original purpose.  

The Long Beach Library has a lease on the building until January 2013 and has budgeted about $24,000 this fiscal year for the branch, which had a total circulation of 17,600 items in 2011-12, according to Trepp. The library offers a job share to Condon and Ingrid Stillwaggon, the branch head. It also employs a teenage page, who returns items to their shelves and recommends books to her peers.

Condon, who has worked at the library for eight years after she retired from her library clerk position at Long Beach High School, said she absolutely loves her work there.

“I often say to people,” she said, “that they’re going to find me dead at my desk, because I’m never leaving this job.”