Island Park Library director stepping down

Next week, Ronnie Swett, the current director of the Island Park Public Library, will be retiring, and Michelle M. young, the current program director at the Oceanside Public Library, will be taking her place.

Swett has been the director of the Island Park library since January of 2003, when she came over from the Queens Library, where she had worked for about a decade.

“I’m retiring because there is just something inside of you that says ‘it’s time,’” said Swett, “and that’s what it is.”

Swett was director of the library when it moved from its old building on Radcliffe Road to the current, much larger location on Long Beach road. “At Radcliffe Road, you couldn’t really do much because it was very tiny,” she said. “So here, the challenge was to enrich and expand. And I think we’ve really done that.”

That is something that Young hopes to continue. She spent 10 years in Oceanside creating new and innovating programming, and she hopes to bring some of that to Island Park.

“I definitely am looking towards the future of libraries in general,” said Young. “I’d like to try some innovative programming, maybe something new for the adults. I’d like to incorporate more of the newer technologies that are coming around. I’d like to even, perhaps, do what I’m doing [in Oceanside]: doing more programs on how to use your e-reader, maybe even purchase some e-readers.”

Part of the programming is one of the things that Swett is going to miss most about the library. “I’m proud of …the dynamic children’s programs we’ve had at the library,” Swett said. “They come running in the door, expecting to have fun.”

One of the other things that Swett is most proud of her from her tenure as the library’s director is how much it has grown.

“I’m proud of the fact that we actually got 96,000 visitors to come to our library last year,” Swett said. “And they come in to use the materials, just to sit and read, come to our programs.

“What I love the most and feel the most passionate about is also what I’m going to miss the most, too,” Swett added. “And that’s really the interaction with the patrons — working with the great staff we have here and the Board of Trustees to provide what [the patrons] need.”