Springfield City Library gets almost $500,000 grant for materials, programs and facilities

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SPRINGFIELD — Molly Fogarty, director of the city library, said the city’s Library Department intends to use the nearly $500,000 grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners on programming, library items, facility upgrades, professional development, salary and wages.

“We’ll make sure that money is used in the best possible way to serve our residents in Springfield,” Fogarty said.

The city’s Library Department has already accepted the grant and is requesting authorization from the City Council during its Monday evening meeting to expend the grant funds.

City Councilor Jesse Lederman said that anytime funds are brought into the city, the council has to approve the acceptance of the grant, which is fairly routine for the council. If all is in order, it will be a “routine passage,” he said.

The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners awarded the library a $499,059 State Aid to Public Libraries grant at its Dec. 1 meeting. The first payment is in the amount of $250,683.35 and if approved by the City Council, the library will receive the remainder of the grant in the spring of 2023.

All nine branches of the Springfield City Library will benefit from the state aid grant.

“Last fiscal year, we had almost 400,000 items borrowed and 300,000 people came into our buildings,” Fogarty said. “This year we did 2,600 programs, and we had about 21,000 people attend our programs.”

She added, “Right now, we have about 61,000 people in Springfield who are registered borrowers, and that’s something we would like to increase as well. We have different ideas and different programs in the words.”

In an email, Fogarty said, “We will be meeting with our management to decide how we will allocate the funds.”

Libraries qualify for state aid by meeting the minimum standards for free public library service in the Commonwealth.

The municipality qualified for the grant by, for instance, providing its services to all residents of the commonwealth, spending 12% of its operating budget on library materials, lending books to other libraries in the commonwealth and not charging patrons for its services.

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