By Jaimie Julia Winters
Josh Humphrey was born in Kearny, where he attended Schuyler School and Kearny High. Ironically, he admits that the library wasn’t a large part of his younger years. After graduating from Montclair State University, he was inspired to become a librarian after a part-time job at Kearny Public Library.
“It has been one of the chief honors in my life that he was able to get my library degree from Rutgers and return to the KPL as a library director, a job that I have greatly enjoyed over the last 15 years,” Humphrey said.
His wife of 20 years, Jennifer Humphrey, is a local School Librarian at Schuyler School. He has two daughters, Anna and Catherine, who are both attending high school in his current hometown of Caldwell.
The Kearny Library has a main library at 402 Kearny Ave. and a branch on 759 Kearny Ave. by Roosevelt School.
Humphrey sat down with Kearny Life on how he became director, and what’s in store for the Kearny Library.
Kearny Life: You grew up in Kearny and graduated from Kearny High. How important was the library to you in those years?
Humphrey: Oddly enough, I was not a library kid at all. I grew up on the other end of town, close to North Arlington, so I was not within walking distance of the Main Library. Along with that, my parents were not library users until later in life. However, my first memories of the KPL do begin in high school, when we were so close to the library that we would sometimes find our way there at lunch time and after school. In those days, teenagers were not such a welcome entity in the library. There was always a strict lady at the front desk when we came in, and she would gladly throw you out if you got noisy in any way. Funny story, when I came back to work part-time at the KPL after college, that same lady was still working at the library, and I was still terrified of her. Once we started working together, though, I realized that she was pretty cool.
Kearny Life: How has the library evolved in what it offers over the years?
Humphrey: Just like many public libraries in New Jersey and beyond, services and spaces have evolved on a huge scale over the time that I have been a director. The foremost change has been in programming. While it was not the overall focus of the library years ago, it has become the chief way that we interact with the community now. Just to give you an idea of the scope of our programming, this past July alone featured nearly 150 different programs that brought in 3,600 people to our building. As with most months, these offerings ranged from live animal shows to skill-building classes like jewelry making and chess, to music performances in our outdoor garden spaces, to magic shows, to preschool movement classes, and plenty of arts and crafts. Along with programming, the physical space of the library has also evolved. While materials were the main focus of a library years ago, it has now become more of a shared workspace. With that in mind, we have added many small seating and work areas within the last several years, allowing for both individual and group work settings. We have also reconfigured our lower level to add more flexible spaces, along with our grounds, where we have added new green space seating areas and new entrances to the building.
Kearny Life: What services do you want the library to provide for Kearny residents and visitors?
Humphrey: Our services have grown with the times, as well. Thinking back to my part-time days here in the late 1990s, we were excited to be offering the first public computer lab. Now we have wireless internet throughout the building, wireless printing capability, faxing and scanning services, along with many online databases and collections. The ones that have grown the most in the past five years by far are our collections of eBooks and streaming audio. What was once one small collection has grown to thousands of titles offered through multiple platforms, including Libby, Hoopla, and Freegal. A normal month now sees the KPL circulate close to 1,000 eBook and audio titles. Through our other online services, we offer a digital version of the Star-Ledger newspaper, interactive language lessons, real-time homework tutoring, and a collection of world recipes. We hope to expand and build our online services even further, along with our social media presence. We hope to continue building a very successful ESL partnership with local organization Literacy NJ, a partnership that continues to be grant-funded through the state.
Kearny Life: What makes Kearny Library unique and special?
Humphrey: I always answer this question the same way. What makes the KPL special is the community of Kearny itself and our wonderful patrons. I have always felt that Kearny is a very unique town, especially considering its strong dedication to service and involvement, thanks to a huge number of organizations and clubs. We are very lucky to work with a number of these great groups, including the Salvation Army, Optimist Club, Women’s Club, Liberty Family Success Center, and our own very dedicated Friends of the KPL group, led by one-time Library Trustee, Jennifer Cullen. We are also unique in the amount of support we enjoy from both our municipality, Mayor Carol Jean Doyle, and the Board of Education. Working hand in hand with them has allowed us to boost our exposure and participate in many town and school-run events, including wellness fairs, monthly school book clubs, and several annual events, with my favorite being the town’s December Tree Lighting Ceremony. We also help to run a unique weekly Farmer’s Market next to the library every Thursday throughout the Summer and Fall months. I don’t know of any other library in New Jersey that does the same!
Kearny Life: Can you tell us more about the library’s programs and what will be new for the fall and winter?
Humphrey: As I mentioned before, programming is, above all, our everyday focus and the reason we see so many people enter our doors. It has been our pleasure over the years to offer a very wide range of events and classes, many of which are taught by teachers and artists in our own community, including Desiree Mills, who runs a wonderful art program and Kara Mackin, who has done an awesome job introducing our young patrons to creative writing over the last year. In the Fall and Winter, we hope to bring the community more of the same. We will be celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with a lecture on Puerto Ricans in the military, as well as musical performances for children and adults. We will be celebrating Oktoberfest with our annual visit from the Florian Schantz Combo, who will offer some festive polka music. We will be bringing back the Manhattan Short Film Festival, during which we act as a location for a worldwide screening of short films by filmmakers from nine different countries. We will also end the year with our annual family holiday party, one of our favorite events for one of our favorite times of the year.
Kearny Life: Can you speak a little about the museum housed on the second floor of the library, what it offers, and why it’s important?
Humphrey: The Kearny Museum is a wonderful resource for the town of Kearny, set up and run by a committee of volunteers over the past several decades. It has many exhibits that celebrate our rich history, including our ties to the Civil War through our namesake General Philip Kearny, along with a storied industrial history that helped us contribute to both World Wars through manufacturing. It would be wrong not to mention sports, which, for many of our patrons, is truly at the heart of our community and a focus of some museum cases. Starting as a Scottish pastime in the early years of the town and becoming a backbone of our current Latin community, the sport of soccer has, in many ways, put Kearny on the map. All Kearny citizens have the unique privilege of a museum that has been established for a very long time now. As the library, we love to collaborate with the museum on many programs and initiatives, including annual school tours with the local school system and an ongoing series of historical walking tours, which kicked off with the town’s Midland Avenue arts district earlier this year.
