People we love of 2024…
The Ny Times Reports
The I Love My Librarian Award has found Fred Gitner.
Gitner, who has worked in programs to assist migrants at the Queens Public Library for 28 years, is one of 10 librarians nationally whom the American Library Association cited for “profound impact on the people in their communities.” The recipients were chosen from nearly 1,400 nominees submitted by library users nationwide. Gitner is the assistant director of the Queens Library’s New Americans Program, which coordinates informational workshops on topics like immigration law, parenting and tenants’ rights.
“I view Fred as our international ambassador,” said Dennis Walcott, the president and chief executive of the Queens Library. “His sensitivity to the asylum seekers who are coming to libraries and what Fred was able to do with his staff to go out and interface with them is off the charts.”
Library officials said the latest round of budget cuts proposed by Mayor Eric Adams, at 5 percent, would force reductions in services like English and citizenship classes that immigrant communities have come to rely on. Demand for those programs has climbed as the coronavirus pandemic has eased: Attendance in English classes was up 35 percent last year from 2022, with more than 62,000 people attending across the library’s 66 locations.
Walcott said the proposed cuts could also have an effect on services offered on Saturdays, which would affect immigrants who have jobs that make stopping at a library impossible during the week. (Sunday hours at the two Queens libraries that were open seven days a week ended with the budget cuts that were announced in November.)
Gitner, 72, didn’t write the book on how libraries could help immigrants, but he coedited one in 2001 and another in 2013. And in more than 25 years with the library, he has followed the changing patterns of immigration in Queens.
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