Laura Massaro, the welcoming face of Ives Main.
“Welcome to the library!” Laurie Massaro sang out at the Ives Main Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library on Elm Street, her voice echoing in the marbled foyer.
Massaro, 60, has been a library aide at Ives Main for the last seven years. In 2008, she was laid off from Yale after 24 years working in administrative and finance. She took on various part-time jobs while bringing up her three kids. Then, through New Haven Works, she learned of a job opening at the library.
Since then, she has worked at the circulation desk, shelved books, and issued new library cards. When library staff returned in April 2020, she was stationed at the front door, handing out books to patrons as part of curbside pickup.
“We got people through the pandemic,” she said, as a mother and her young son trooped in, hand in hand.
She has since moved further inside — and remains the welcoming face of Ives Main.
That’s no coincidence, according to NHFPL Deputy Director Luis Chavez-Brumell.
“Laurie is a New Haven native who understands the value of the public library to its community,” he said. “Her enthusiasm for library offerings is sincere. She regularly participates in library programs as an attendee during her breaks.”
On this particular morning, Massaro directed three patrons to the passport office, handed out masks to a father and son bounding into the library, recommended Claire’s Corner Copia for lunch to a family on an informal tour of Yale, and reached to the side of her desk for a map of New Haven and its outlying areas.
“In case you want to go on a drive,” she told the visitor. “A lot of nice towns around here.”
A woman entered. “Welcome to the library,” Massaro said. “How are you today?”
The woman, Linda Mickens, was looking for the “Make to Sell” workshop, created to help people turn an idea for an online business into a reality. The workshop that day was titled “Getting Started with Etsy.”
Entrance to Ives Squared.
Massaro directed Mickens to Ives Squared, a space designed to fire up an entrepreneurial spirit in New Haven’s citizens. Across the space, a 3D carving machine, used for transforming ideas into wood and plastic, stood in wait.
Etsy workshop in action.
There were two other women at physically distanced trapezoid-shaped tables with computers in front of them. Kris Tonski, a web designer who was leading the workshop, was in the midst of connecting her computer to a large projector in front of the tables. The squares of six or seven faces, joining by Zoom, appeared on the screen.
Linda Mickens.
At the behest of Tonski, each of the in-person makers introduced herself. One made greeting cards. The other was aiming to sell her body care products. Mickens, who said she has been a sculptor since the 1980s, currently makes angels out of recycled paper and wires, which she sells by word of mouth and on her website.
“Start your selling on Etsy,” Tonski told the three makers. “There’s 89 million people already looking for hand-made, unique goods there.” The problem: exorbitant fees. “Stay only as long as you gain a following and your sales are up, then you can move to your own website and direct sales there.”
Over the click of keyboards, a voice came over the intercom: “‘Tell Them We Are Rising’ is starting in five minutes downstairs.”
A man drifted into the space and stood near the back, listening intently.
“Did you like the workshop?” Massaro asked, as she welcomed another patron. “You should go see the film. Downstairs. Program Room. Follow the signs. I’m told it’s wonderful.”
In the program room, the opposing visions on education between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois played out on the big screen in a documentary telling the story of historically black colleges and universities.
“We refuse to kiss the hand that smites us but rather insist on striving by all civilized methods to gain every right and privilege open to free Americans,” a narrator intoned, quoting DuBois, as three people watched with rapt attention.
Back in the foyer, Massaro was directing another patron seeking a passport application. “All the way past reference,” she said.
“Sometimes I give these out,” she said, picking up a flyer for Liberty Community Services, which offers, among other resources, assistance on housing and job searches, as well as information on food pantries, detox centers, and mental health services.
“They used to have the office here, but now it’s the passport office, because we couldn’t have people in here during the pandemic,” she said. “So now we’re the liaison to give them current information on where they need to go.”
She produced a basket of socks and scarves from under her desk. “Maria Tonelli, my boss who just retired, started Sox in the City,” she said. “People drop them off, or they drop off scarves they’ve knitted, and then when someone comes in and they look like they could use something warm, I offer it to them.”
Which is, Massaro said, “the best part about working here,” as she welcomed two teenage girls who had just pushed through the door.
“We’re helping people. We’re making a difference in their lives. And we’re making them feel welcome. And when I say them, I mean everybody. We’re open to everyone. That’s a beautiful thing.”
People like Laurie Massaro and the Library are invaluable treasures to the city and its residents. Yale lost out when they laid her off, but New Haven gained so much more.