Mary Joyce Doyle, credited with revolutionizing book lending in Bergen County, dies at 87

JAY LEVIN
The Record
View Comments

Mary Joyce Doyle, a politically savvy former nun who was “founding mother” of the library consortium that revolutionized the borrowing of books in Bergen County, died Tuesday at her New Milford home. She was 87.

After 25 years as a member of the Sisters of Mercy and an educator in Catholic schools, Ms. Doyle left the order for a new career. She received a master’s degree in library science from Catholic University, landed a job as an assistant library director in Fair Lawn and in 1974 moved on to become director of the Bergenfield Public Library.

By 1976, before “shared services” had become a municipal mantra, Ms. Doyle was pushing a plan to create reciprocal lending among all Bergen County public libraries. As she envisioned it, an Upper Saddle River resident unable to find a specific novel at the local library could order it from a consortium member — say, the Bergenfield Public Library — that had the book in its collection. And before long, the book would be on its way to Upper Saddle River from Bergenfield.

“We’re at the point where local libraries can’t go it alone anymore,” Ms. Doyle told The Record, adding that regionalization was the wave of the future.

The proposal was supported on the editorial page of The Record, which branded it Ms. Doyle’s “brainchild,” and got a boost when Ms. Doyle became president of the New Jersey Library Association. The Bergen County Cooperative Library System — or Buckles, the way its acronym, BCCLS, is pronounced — was launched on Oct. 1, 1979, with initial financing from the New Jersey State Library and the Bergen County Freeholders. Its growth mushroomed after several years, when libraries began installing computers where patrons could search for titles.

Today, BCCLS has 77 member libraries, including 15 in Essex, Hudson and Passaic counties. Of the 11 million books, DVDs and other items BCCLS members circulate annually, 2.2 million circulate among libraries, according to BCCLS Executive Director Marie Coughlin.

Michael McCue, director of the Teaneck Public Library, was working at the Upper Saddle River Library in the late 1970s when he met Ms. Doyle at BCCLS organizing meetings. At the time, small groups of Bergen County libraries were aligned in “federations” that ran joint programs and took a haphazard stab at sharing their collections. Ms. Doyle advocated a strength-in-numbers approach.

“Mary Joyce was truly the founding mother of BCCLS,” McCue said. “She had a clear idea of what libraries should be doing together, and you couldn’t help but respond to her.”

Robert White, who retired in 2015 after nearly three decades as BCCLS executive director, said the cooperative was the result of Ms. Doyle’s organizational and political smarts.

“Mary Joyce was always at the doorstep of the State Librarian and political officials trying to wangle money,” he said. “And it was easier to say yes to her than no to her.”

White recalled his first visit with Ms. Doyle, at her library, after he became BCCLS executive director. “She had to break away to take a call,” he said, “and came back and said, ‘I had to tell the mayor who to appoint to the Library Board.’”

Ms. Doyle, who was civically active in Bergenfield, was the library director for 25 years. Under her leadership, the library became known for its outreach, including to Filipino and other ethnic communities.

“She was synonymous with the library — when you talked about Mary Joyce, you were talking about the library,” said Linda Mohr, a 55-year borough resident and past president of the Friends of the Bergenfield Library.

Alluding to Ms. Doyle’s previous career as a parochial school teacher, Mohr said: “And with the kids, there was no fooling around in that library — because Mary Joyce was there.”

Mary Joyce Doyle, the middle of three daughters, was born and raised in Trenton and educated in Catholic schools. As a girl, she buried her nose in Nancy Drew mysteries, said her sister, June.

She entered the Sisters of Mercy in her late teens, graduated from Georgian Court University and taught at parochial schools in Central and South Jersey. She also was head librarian at Holy Spirit High School in Absecon.

In a 1974 interview with The Record, Ms. Doyle was asked about her decision to leave the religious life.

“I liked the challenge of public library work because it involved a wide variety of people, and all age groups,” she said.

In 1992, Bergen County cited Ms. Doyle’s founding of the Cooperative Library System when honoring her at the annual Pioneer Women of the ’90s luncheon. And in 2003, Ms. Doyle’s name was attached to the BCCLS scholarship program that benefits library science students who work at member libraries.

Mary Joyce Doyle is survived by her sisters, June A. Doyle of New Milford and Sister Patricia A. Doyle, OSF, of Manalapan. The funeral is 9:30 a.m. Thursday at Church of the Ascension in New Milford. Arrangements are by Riewerts Memorial Home, Bergenfield.

Email: levin@northjersey.com

View Comments
https://www.northjersey.com/story/life/announcements/obituaries/2016/06/29/mary-joyce-doyle-credited-with-revolutionizing-book-lending-in-bergen-county-dies-at-87/94876584/
www.northjersey.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-39
145472
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:HAQ3QJDJBSHIUOVVSRPDNQOVWWVMKN6C
<urn:uuid:01c278b3-9649-43e6-bed5-c1cffe8f9512>
2021-09-21T11:49:38Z
151.101.250.62
text/html
sha1:BMAQDAXT22PQNSCV3QTRDDINFNHJ5QAV
<urn:uuid:51c1b7a7-1ce2-4e32-af68-d35f367a2d55>
https://www.northjersey.com/story/life/announcements/obituaries/2016/06/29/mary-joyce-doyle-credited-with-revolutionizing-book-lending-in-bergen-county-dies-at-87/94876584/
response
<urn:uuid:569f5217-6dc7-41d8-b3e8-deb9b268e92e>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-40
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/