Lynn library’s Mitchell shelving career for July retirement

LYNN – After a five-year tenure as chief librarian that saw the public library double its circulation and plan a major renovation, Nadine Mitchell is stepping down in July to spend more time with her husband and enjoy early retirement.”Early” may not be the right word to describe the exodus from a 30-year civic career including 20 years in the public library beginning with her service as a student page. Mitchell shelved books as a Salem High School student and when a job opened up in the Lynn library she took it.She succeeded former chief Joan Reynolds in 2004, one year after state spending cuts decimated the library budget and closed its three neighborhood branches. Mitchell and her co-workers struggled to keep the North Common Street main library open to the public to avoid jeopardizing vital state library funding.Despite the budget reductions, she worked with the library trustees and Friends of the Lynn Library to ensure Gates Foundation money given to the library paid to provide computers for public use. As state, then local funds were restored, Mitchell worked to expand the library’s collection of foreign language titles and to add new titles to the library collection.The work paid off: The library circulated nearly 13,000 books in March – twice as many checked out by patrons in 2004.”It shows we have diversified the collection. It becomes a money issue in terms of inter-library loaning and state grants,” she said.The library will spend Gates Foundation money this summer and next to buy 14 more computers to continue, in Mitchell’s words, “bridging the digital divide.”Mitchell also oversaw children’s room renovations and worked with the trustees and Friends to restore and hang in the library’s public areas over a dozen paintings “that were moldering in the attic.”Plans for an expansion into the Franklin Street parking lot “are probably not in the cards,” she said.The scaled down renovation work will focus on renovating the library, beginning with an evaluation of work needed on walls and the roof.”After that is done, we’ll look at the interior,” she said.Tentative plans for paying for the renovation involve combining $1 million in proceeds from the sales of the three previously shuttered branch libraries with state money. Mitchell estimated the renovation will cost $3 million. She plans to leave additional renovation planning in the hands of city Inspectional Services Director Michael Donovan.”He’s in the building business, I’m in the book business,” she said.