Palmerton Library director retires after 13 years

Diane Danielson spent one of her childhood summers cataloging.

That’s right. One summer, Danielson and her younger sister set aside some of their valuable time off school to put their family’s book collection in order.

And while neither were familiar with the Dewey Decimal System, the two made up their own method of classification, slapping stickers on the back of each text and neatly placing them back on the shelf.

“I knew I always liked libraries,” Danielson said at 64, less than a month before she retires from her position of director at the Palmerton Area Library.

Danielson was born in Kane, a borough in McKean County. She received her degree from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in home economics education. The program covered the whole of home sciences, and one subject in particular caught Danielson’s attention.

“Child development is a big part of home economics education,” Danielson said. “That’s the part I really like.”

Danielson taught home economics at Oil City High School in Venango County before marrying her husband, Rodger, Palmerton Borough manager, in 1979.

In 1984, Danielson opened her own preschool in Tionesta, which she called Tionesta Preschool and Co-op. She ran the school until 1990, when Danielson and her family moved to Palmerton.

“It was a big to-do, move this far away with four little kids,” Danielson said. “We didn’t know anybody.”

It didn’t take long before Danielson planted roots in the community. In 1991, she started what is now known as Palmerton Preschool and Childcare Center on Delaware Avenue, which is still open to this day.

In total, Danielson spent 20 years working in the child development field.

In 2000, Danielson was operating the preschool for half the day. She said that her own children were growing up, and at the time, she “wanted to do something a little more than just the preschool.” Then she found out that the Palmerton Area Library had a part-time position open.

“I’ve always been a library user, so I applied,” Danielson recalled.

For the first few years, Danielson ran the front desk, tallying the library’s comers and goers and checking books in and out. She also went back to school, obtaining a degree in library sciences from Northampton Community College.

Then in March 2006, the library’s director at the time, Gerald Geiger, retired, and Danielson took on the role.

“It was a little overwhelming because he (Geiger) left pretty much all of a sudden,” Danielson said. “So I had no training.

“Luckily, some of the ladies that were working here at the time worked here for a very long time, so they were very helpful.”

Danielson’s first challenge as director came in the form of the circulation system. At the time, the library was still using paper cards, and its cataloging system had yet to be computerized.

In addition to procuring over $50,000 in grant money to fund the project, the process also required weeding through the institution’s collections and individually sticking bar codes on its more than 30,000 items.

“That was a huge task,” Danielson said.

Another one of Danielson’s goals as director was to redefine the library’s purpose.

If we’re talking only of appearances, the Palmerton Area Library is a sight to behold. But even with its imposing architecture and spacious upstairs gallery, Danielson knew the building offered so much more than storage.

Danielson wanted to “make it more like a community center than just a building where they have books,” as she puts it.

“One of the things that I really wanted to do when I took over was try to get more activities here at the library and use the building more,” Danielson said.

And so she did. Over the 13-year span of her career, Danielson saw the start — and continuation — of numerous library programs, like Homework Helpers, an after-school tutoring session held by volunteers at the library, and Friends of the Palmerton Area Library, a group that sponsors annual art shows and other fundraisers for the library.

Every day, Palmerton’s librarians hand tally the number of people who walk through its doors in order to track annual attendance. When Danielson took over in 2006, attendance for that year was about 24,000 visits. Last year, that figure was over 40,000.

“The use is going up, and I think part of it is the programs that we have here,” Danielson said.

Danielson’s last day at Palmerton Area Library is April 10. Her replacement, Christine DeSousa, has worked at the Palmerton Area Library for about four years. DeSousa, 29, has a degree in library sciences from Kutztown University.

“It’s a big responsibility,” DeSousa said, adding that between Danielson’s guidance and support from her fellow library staff, she’s ready for the challenge.

“I don’t get the feeling that I’m like the lone man trying to run something,” DeSousa said. “I feel like it is the group of us working together, trying to make this a great place to be.”

Despite what some say, librarians aren’t finger-wagging disciplinarians with a perpetual need to shush you. In fact, Danielson said, they are public servants.

Danielson remembers one instance in particular when a woman walked into the library crying. She was in the middle of a divorce and about to lose custody of her daughter. The woman had a number of tasks to complete online to prevent that from happening, but she didn’t know how to use the computer. A staff member sat down with the woman and helped her with every step.

A few weeks later, the woman came in again, still in tears. But this time she had her daughter in tow.

“I don’t know that people outside think that stuff goes on in a library,” Danielson said. “You never know who’s going to walk through the door. You don’t know what their life story is going to be. You don’t know what’s been going on in their life that day, and maybe some little kindness that you can help them with might make all the difference.”