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Truro Public Library

    COMMUNITY

    Truro’s New Public Library Director Hopes to Expand Its Reach

    Chris Kaufmann says being a librarian isn’t just about helping you find the next book to read

    By

    TRURO — When Chris Kaufmann, who grew up in Pelham, N.Y., was eight years old, she saw Rupert Holmes’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood on Broadway. The only thing she remembers from the experience is the musical’s unusual interactive element: the audience votes on what happens next.

    Chris Kaufmann is the Truro Public Library’s new director. (Photo by Emily Schiffer)

    Kaufmann, the new director of the Truro Public Library, has been a librarian for 13 years, so

    seeking the community’s input has long been an undercurrent of her career. “Librarians are not just here to help you find the next book to read,” she says. “We fill a gap. We look into our communities and see what isn’t being offered.”

    Kaufmann was selected this month from among more than 20 applicants to succeed Tricia Ford, who retired on Oct. 8 after 12 years in the director’s job. While admiring the library’s established place in the community, Kaufmann says she hopes to gradually expand its reach, including to those who might never visit its physical space.

    “I’m not a fan of drastic changes,” Kaufmann says. She takes a more incremental approach to leadership, she says, adding that she hopes she can broaden people’s perceptions of what a library can be and who it can serve.

    Being a librarian, she points out, means being an eclectic problem-solver. On any given day, she might help someone apply for a job, identify a scam email, or demystify an iPhone. She has delivered materials to homebound patrons, helped small business owners navigate licensing, and taught cybersecurity basics.

    After a decade working as a paralegal in New York and Chicago, Kaufmann became a librarian in 2011, starting at the Brooks Free Library in Harwich. She later worked at the Brewster Ladies’ Library and Yarmouth Town Libraries, where she developed resources for patrons with disabilities.

    “I was witnessing uneven levels of service,” she says, citing the Brooks Free Library’s program for people with vision loss as unique on Cape Cod. Kaufmann also observed that neurodivergent patrons and those with intellectual disabilities often sought her out. “I wondered why and what I could do about it,” she says.

    That curiosity has shaped her career. In 2020, she earned a master’s in library science from Simmons University in Boston, and she’s currently pursuing a Ph.D. there, focusing on disability studies and accessibility in public libraries. She points out that much research on accessibility is done by people who have never worked in libraries, and that’s something she hopes to change.

    For Kaufmann, accessibility means cultivating a library where everyone feels welcome, regardless of how they learn, socialize, or experience the world. “You shouldn’t require proof from someone that they need help,” she says. “We should be advocating for people.”

    This aligns with the ethos of the CLAMS Library Network, a resource-sharing cooperative founded in 1988 that encompassed 35 libraries on the Cape and Islands. In 2023 alone, the network gained 21,000 new borrowers and recorded 1.5 million checkouts of a diverse range of materials.

    Kaufmann has chaired the CLAMS Bibliographic Implementation Committee since 2018, overseeing the computerized records of all collections. Before that, she chaired the CLAMS Public Services Implementation Committee.

    In Truro, Kaufmann plans to expand the library’s physical and digital collections, adding more large-print books, audiobooks, and electronic resources to better serve patrons with vision impairments, dyslexia, and other print disabilities. This is practical as much as personal: Kaufmann herself is dyslexic.

    She’s also a fan of mysteries. Right now, she’s listening to How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin. And she’s bringing her Zoom-based mystery book club with her from the Yarmouth Town Libraries.

    Technology education is a priority. Offering classes on topics like cybersecurity could be one avenue to help patrons navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape, she says.

    “Technology is outpacing the ability of many people to learn it,” she says. “Building confidence is a key component of teaching technology because a lot of people think that it is something that is permanently beyond their ken.”

    Kaufmann also sees libraries as guardians of information literacy amid rising misinformation and threats to free speech.

    “This is not the first time this has happened in history — we go through these witch hunts over and over,” she says. “We can’t tell people how to think, but we can provide them with all the tools to teach themselves and try to understand where their information is coming from.”

    TRURO LIBRARY

    With Ford Retiring, Trustees Seek More Influence

    A charter change is tested as town moves forward on search for a new director

    By

    TRURO — In this town where several hundred people spent the spring in hot debates about voting, housing, lawn signs, and the meaning of the word “rural,” there is one thing that everyone seems to agree on: the public library is a gem.

    “To me, the library is the de facto community center,” said Shawn Grunwald during public comments at the select board’s Aug. 13 meeting.

    For the past 12 years, the Truro Public Library has been led by Director Tricia Ford, and people think she’s a gem, too. Last month, Ford announced her plans to retire in October. It won’t be easy for her to leave this job behind. “I’ve loved every minute of it,” she told the Independent.

    Ford’s last day is Oct. 8, and the town is working on hiring the library’s next director. A search committee will conduct its first review of applications on Sept. 9, Town Manager Darrin Tangeman said on Monday. He hopes to have the next director appointed by the time Ford leaves.

    As he does with the heads of all town departments, Tangeman has final authority to name the next library director. But Grunwald was one of seven people at the select board meeting advocating for more public participation in the hiring of Ford’s successor.

    The town’s process for hiring a library director was a much-discussed hypothetical before town meeting passed a charter amendment in April 2023. That amendment was intended to ensure broad participation in the appointment.

    The amendment, proposed in a petitioned article that was placed last on the warrant, kept hundreds of voters present to the meeting’s end. It added a single sentence to the charter, mandating that the town manager appoint the library director “after consultation with the Board of Library Trustees.”

    The trustees are a five-member elected body that works with the library on policy and programming matters.

    The amendment’s lead petitioner, Martha Magane, cited past charter changes that had excluded trustees from library director selection as the reason she thought this change was needed. And this week, she said, “The library trustees have kind of slipped under the radar when it comes to hiring a library director.” She described the trustees’ role as “monkey in the middle.”

    When it was on the table, Tangeman said the charter change might cause confusion. It “could lead to unfounded assertions of authority and a mistaken outsized role for the Library Trustees,” he wrote in a comment on the article.

    Despite that pushback, the charter change passed by a large majority. At the ballot on May 14, 2024, voters approved the measure by more than 600 votes.

    With Ford’s retirement, the theoretical hiring question has become a practical one. It has also revealed that the new charter language describing that the hire be made “in consultation” with trustees means different things to different people.

    This week, Tangeman said that the hiring process was not unfolding differently than it would have prior to the charter amendment, since it hadn’t changed or expanded the authority of the library trustees.

    Magane, who was for many years the director of Eastham’s library and is now vice chair of the Truro library trustees, will participate in interviewing candidates for the position of director. Tangeman and Assistant Town Manager Kelly Clark will also serve on the hiring committee.

    Ann Courtney, past president and current member of the Friends of the Truro Library, said she was hoping for more public participation on the hiring committee. “I’m hoping that it’s a very inclusive, broad-based committee representative of the community,” Courtney said.

    “We are negotiating adding another community member, perhaps a former trustee or a library user,” the chair of the library trustees, Kait Blehm, told the Independent.

    “We feel that two administrators and one person from the library board is a little out of balance,” Magane said.

    The town is considering reaching out to library directors in other towns to sit in on interviews, Tangeman said Monday. They are also considering adding a member of the Friends, a nonprofit group that funds library programming, to the group.

    As to whether the panel should include another library trustee, however, Tangeman said that town counsel had cautioned that might lead to Open Meeting Law violations.

    That apparently did not happen in Provincetown when Amy Raff was hired to be library director in 2018. The interview panel there included two library trustees, a library staff member, one library volunteer, and one administrator, according to Town Manager Alex Morse. Raff’s second interview happened at an open board meeting before all the trustees, at which they and two community members asked questions, Morse said.

    Eastham Library Director Melanie McKenzie took the job in 2021 after a hiring process that included interviews with at least two trustees and at least one member of the Friends of the Eastham Library, said Town Manager Jacqui Beebe.

    Though she is the final appointing authority, Beebe said she works closely with trustees in hiring the library director. It’s a question about which, she said, “I would defer to the trustees.”

    Keith Althaus has been a Truro library trustee for more than 20 years. In 2012, he was one of five members of the search committee that selected Ford. Three of the committee members were trustees and two were members of the community, he said.

    That time around, Althaus told the Independent, “There were no members of the town government; they didn’t send anyone.” According to a report in the Provincetown Banner, that hiring committee chose two finalists from 10 applicants to interview with the town administrator and the departing library director. Ford was chosen unanimously.

    When the charter change was discussed at town meeting in 2023, Althaus called the change “a restoration of common sense language.” But this week, he described the charter’s language as “vague”: “ ‘In consultation’ — I don’t know how you would settle that,” Althaus said.

    Tangeman said he anticipated being on the same page as other interviewers about whom to hire. “I don’t think anybody who’s participating in this process doesn’t want the most highly qualified candidate to be the person appointed,” he said.

    GARDENER’S NOTEBOOK

    Harvesting Kale and Beets and Planting Garlic

    A Q&A with Sarah Naciri at the Truro Community Children’s Garden

    By

    Text and Drawings by Abraham Storer 

    Sarah Naciri runs Sustainable CAPE’s Community Children’s Garden at the Truro Public Library, where she leads children in planting, cultivating, and harvesting vegetables. Last week, while she worked with volunteer Mimi Bois and a few children, she described the crops they’re still harvesting and planting. 

    Q: What’s growing in your garden right now?

    Sarah Naciri: We’re continuing to eat the kale that’s growing new. We’re also harvesting squash and beets, and we have lots of chives, a variety of herbs, and nasturtiums.

    Q: Are you planting anything?

    SN: In August, we planted carrot seeds and beet seeds with the hope that we would get a fall crop. Some of the beets have really taken off. We’re now transplanting the seedlings to larger beds. At some point when it gets really cold we will cover these up with a row cover called Reemay — a light fabric that can be placed over cold-sensitive plants to protect them from cold temperatures. We’ll probably get some small crops in November.

    Next week we’re planning on planting a good amount of garlic. We usually do 60 to 70 garlic plants in the children’s garden.

    Q: How do you grow garlic?

    SN: I save seed garlic — bulbs from the biggest, healthiest bulbs we grow. I also always get some from a few other farms so that we’re not just using the same varieties year after year. Throughout the summer when people are harvesting their garlic, I try to get in quickly to get the most beautiful cloves. I cure them at home — I choose a dark, dry place and use fans to really keep the air flowing and get it dry. It takes a few weeks to cure it properly, and once it’s dried it stores well.

    Q: And then you just put the cloves in the soil? 

    SN: It’s important to enrich the spot where you’re  growing garlic. Before I plant, I like to amend the soil with a powdered blend of sulfur, alfalfa meal, bone char, zeolites, feather meal, and neem cake. This will hopefully bring bigger bulbs and richer flavor.

    The kids break the cured bulbs into cloves and then we will plant each clove, placing the root end down and the pointed tip upward. They should be planted two inches deep and six inches apart in rows 15 to 18 inches apart. After planting, we add a thick layer of salt marsh hay or straw to keep the garlic happy throughout the winter. In the spring, we very slowly and carefully take off the salt hay, layer by layer, as the ground warms.

    Q: Do you enrich the rest of the garden soil at this time of year?

    SN: AmeriCorps helps us collect seaweed, which we use to put the beds to rest. There are years and years of seaweed here. We also put in layers of leaf mulch, and we’ve used little bits of manure at different times.

     

    DIRT

    Vegan Mud Pies in a Hobbit-Inspired Kitchen Near an Edible Forest

    Cape Cod Tech and Nauset High students help revamp a library’s gardens

    By

    TRURO — This summer, when the “mud kitchen” behind the Truro Public Library is open for business, Leela Okeanos, who just turned six, plans on making vegan mud pies. The base, she said, will be a blend of soil and clay, and the filling will be chockful of leaves and sticks. “Oh, and tree bark on top,” she added, “as icing.”

    IN THE STACKS

    Finding Rhythm in Truro’s Hills

    The Truro Public Library’s art collection connects its community and landscape

    By

    The Truro Public Library, like its peers on the Outer Cape, hosts an art collection donated by artists and patrons. This past month, Tom Wojtalak became the latest donor with the addition of his wood relief picture, Harbor Scene, depicting two fishing boats entering Provincetown Harbor.

    Thomas Wojtalak depicts Provincetown Harbor using wood from old shingles and beach finds. (Photos by Abraham Storer)

    “I’m getting up there in age, and now I’m the only one looking at the stuff,” says Wojtalak from his home in Truro. Looking for a way to share his work with others, he approached the Truro library. “The library has always been really good to me,” he says of his decision to donate a piece. It was created from found wood, some sourced from Truro beaches, and Wojtalak felt the library was “a good place to put it so the people of Truro could see it.”

    Much of the art in the Truro library reflects similar connections between the community, its artists, and the library. The democratic and eclectic collection mixes amateur painting with work by established artists, including Josephine Hopper and Charles James Martin.

    “People have some kind of tie to the community,” says Library Director Tricia Ford. A few of the pieces reflect collaborative projects, including a large quilt hanging above a light-filled reading alcove. The quilt was created to coincide with the construction of the library’s current building in 1999.

    This quilt was made by members of the community to coincide with the Truro library’s construction in 1999.

    Over a few winters between 2009 and 2014, local artist Janice Redman worked with participants from the Children’s Community Garden, a project initiated by Sustainable CAPE. Redman is known for using common materials such as wool, pins, hair, or wax and inventing surprising and subtly unsettling objects. At the library, Redman extended her obsession with materials, leading children, teens, and parents to create colorful nature-themed tapestries using wool and felting techniques.

    Joan Pereira, a Provincetown artist who died in December, and Tom Wojtalak are also focused on finding creative possibilities in the exploitation of a single material. Wojtalak, who is self-taught, masterfully manipulated weathered snow fences from the beach and old shingles to create his harbor scene. The rippled texture of the wood depicting the sea mimics the movement of waves, and broken branches evoke the irregular pilings of a wharf.

    Joan Pereira takes the eye on a journey in her glass mosaic.

    Although primarily known as a painter, Pereira used multi-colored glass in her mosaic at the library, titled A View From Pond Village. This hilly landscape on the Truro bayside depicts a late afternoon by the water in highly saturated summery colors — the sunlit ochres of the sandy cliffs, the deep blue of the bay. It’s a rhythmic composition of hills, valleys, and meandering roads, the eye moving up and down, in and out as it sweeps through the image.

    Hanging near Pereira’s piece is a watercolor by Nancy Whorf on loan from the collection of Diana Worthington. Like Pereira, Whorf finds inspiration in Truro’s hills; but the scene here is of winter. The artist depicts the town from a high vantage point, the foreground defined by quick marks describing a denuded bush and brownish shrubs. The road, a snaking gestural mark, leads the viewer into a dense composition of houses with a treeline of cool purples defining the background.

    Nancy Whorf pictures Truro in a winter scene, one of her favorite motifs.

    Nancy Whorf, who died in 2009, acquired some understanding of watercolor from her father, John Whorf, a virtuosic watercolorist. Active in Provincetown throughout her life, she was memorialized by her daughter Julia Whorf Kelly in the memoir Feast or Famine: Growing Up Bohemian in Provincetown. Snow scenes, like the one at the Truro library, were a favorite motif.

    In Charles James Martin’s 1932 watercolor Back Shore, a.k.a. Highland Cliff, the weather is foreboding. Martin describes a stormy sea with hurried brush strokes, the cliffs covered in blackish green foliage lacking any illumination. He breaks the landscape into a series of interlocking triangular shapes. Although he includes some textures, such as the three broad brush strokes defining the side of a cliff, Martin’s work reveals an interest in the flatness, geometry, and abstraction so central to American modernist landscape painting. A painting of its era, it recalls the work of his student Georgia O’Keefe, as well as Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley.

    Charles James Martin, who taught Georgia O’Keeffe, typifies American Modernist painting in this watercolor of Highland Cliffs.

    Around the same time that Martin painted this landscape, Edward and Josephine Hopper lived and worked in Truro. Although the library doesn’t own any works by the more famous member of this couple, it does own a treasured piece by Josephine. South Truro Meeting House is currently undergoing restoration in Provincetown by Kristina Bird.

    “It’s gorgeous,” Bird says. The painting depicts a building that was lost to fire, now the site of Meeting House Park. “You can see the landscape is treeless,” Bird explains.

    Josephine Hopper’s work, like the others, reveals complex layers of Truro’s history with a shifting cast of personalities. The library’s art, along with its books and programing, serves to build a community around shared values of creative inquiry, respect for the land, and collaborative action.

     

    READING ROOM

    What Do You Wish For?

    At the Provincetown library, a migration story

    By

    Wishes is a children’s book written by Muon Thi Van and illustrated by Victo Ngai. It chronicles one family’s migration from Vietnam. It was chosen by children in both the Truro and Provincetown schools as the best book of the year in a mock Caldecott competition organized by the Truro Public Library.

    Maggie Hanelt, the youth services librarian there, says she has been highlighting books about refugees. “It’s important for all of us to explore and know these stories,” Hanelt says.

    “Wishes is my most personal story yet,” writes author Muon Thi Van on her website. “It is the story that compelled me to write books.”

    Beatrice Ferreira of Provincetown with Wishes, a book she recommends. (Photos by Agata Storer)

    “The book is about a girl leaving her home, and it’s a true story,” says Beatrice Ferreira of Provincetown, age seven. She first saw the book at her school library. Now she’s paging through it again in the stacks at the Provincetown Public Library.

    “Most of the illustrations were made at night,” says Beatrice, opening the book to a page with a portrait of a girl against a starry sky. “In my favorite one there is more than just the sea; birds are there, too, and the family is getting closer to the shore,” Beatrice says.

    An illustration, by Victo Ngai, from Wishes.

    “The book is sad because a family has to leave their home and relatives,” she adds. But it also inspires thoughts of what might be found in faraway places. “My wish would be to go to Portugal. It’s my favorite country. I love the look of apartment buildings there and the cherry trees are so beautiful.

    “I would recommend reading this book,” Beatrice says, “because of the beautiful illustrations that are bright and dark.” —Agata Storer

    Band Together (Thurs.)

    By

    The Truro Public Library, 7 Standish Way, continues its free summer concert series with Chandler Travis and his band on Thursday, Aug. 19, 6:30 p.m. Known for his “keenly entertaining” performances, Travis remains predictably unpredictable, but never at the expense of a good song.

    Close Looking (Mon.)

    By

    The Truro Public Library hosts a virtual Zoom event with museum educator Philip Yenawine on Monday, Aug. 2, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Yenawine will discuss Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a method developed with cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen to engage children with art that they may find unfamiliar or challenging. Registration is free at trurolibrary.org.

    Burst Your Bubble

    By

    Mr. Vinny, a.k.a. “The Bubble Guy,” will perform on the back lawn of the Truro Public Library, 7 Standish Way, on Saturday, July 24th, from 2 to 3 p.m. Using large, homemade bubble wands, Mr. Vinny will create magic and interactive fun. The event is free.

    Community Kids

    By

    Held outside the Truro Public Library, 7 Standish Way, the Children’s Community Garden Group with Sustainable CAPE meets Tuesdays at 3:30 p.m. Learn how to grow fruits and vegetables in a way that benefits the health of the community. Free; all ages welcome.

    Native Soil

    By

    Tim Turner, Indigenous museum educator at Plimoth Patuxet, will give a talk about Wampanoag history and culture on Cape Cod during the 18th century, hosted by the Truro Public Library. It will take place outdoors at 7 Standish Way in two sessions on Wednesday, June 30th, from 10 to 11 a.m. and 11 a.m. to noon. Registration is free at trurolibrary.org.

     

    Cool Cats

    By

    Come celebrate the summer solstice with Woof Woof Meow, a new five-piece band started by Michael Holt, on the green behind the Truro Public Library, 7 Standish Way, on Sunday, June 20th, at 4 p.m. It’s an all-ages event “encouraging people to dance in celebration of the Earth,” with an eclectic mix of “Prince, Fela Kuti, ska, reggae, Latin, New Wave, and more,” according to the press release. The concert is free, but donations are appreciated.

     

    Open Book

    By

    How have reading habits changed since the pandemic? Tricia Ford, director of the Truro Public Library, and Debra DeJonker-Berry, director of the Eastham Public Library, will discuss this and more in “Adapting and Innovating: What’s on the Horizon for Our Public Libraries?,” a Zoom talk hosted by the Nauset Fellowship, on Sunday, May 30th, at 10 a.m. Registration is free at nfuu.org.

     

    Kidding Around

    By

    The Truro Public Library is hosting a creative movement class for children ages two to five, outdoors at 7 Standish Way, on Monday, May 24th, from 11 to 11:45 a.m. Expect lots of songs and body awareness exercises. Call 508-240-3310 to register.

     

    Kick Start

    By

    André Lima teaches a Capoeira class outdoors at the Truro Public Library, 7 Standish Way, on Thursday, May 13th, at 3:30 p.m. Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian art form that combines dance with martial arts. There will also be a chance to play traditional instruments and learn songs in Portuguese. Registration is free at trurolibrary.org.

     

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