Longtime Gales Ferry librarian calls it a career

Mary Ellen Osborne retired on Saturday

Ledyard — Mary Ellen Osborne’s career with the town library system started as a storytime reading volunteer in the 1980s.

But the longtime librarian’s love of libraries goes back to her childhood.

Osborne, who retired Saturday after 18 years leading the Gales Ferry branch and many more as a volunteer, grew up surrounded by adults who worked at libraries, including her mother and their neighbors. She said she knew at a young age that she wanted to follow suit.

“I love libraries, and I love the connections with people,” she said. “It’s just been a very fulfilling career.”

After Osborne’s storytime gig, she joined the staff for a short time from 1988 to ’89 as a children’s librarian at Bill Library in Ledyard Center before joining the library commission. After 11 years on the commission, serving as chairman and treasurer, she rejoined the staff as assistant librarian at Gales Ferry Library.

Gale Bradbury, director of Ledyard Libraries, said Osborne has helped thousands of patrons with hundreds of inquiries. One initiative she highlighted was a Library Services and Technology Act grant Osborne obtained to boost services for seniors, including a library book delivery service for homebound individuals.

“I really think she took the ball and ran with that,” Bradbury said in reference to the grant. “She always wanted what was best for the patrons.”

Osborne recalled one patron she met through the program who was hard of hearing; they communicated primarily through notes, where she found out that the woman was a baseball fan just like her. Osborne made sure to scout out the best baseball books for that patron, and when the woman died, her sister wrote to Osborne to thank her for the friendship.

Osborne also established a book collection at Ledyard Senior Center and developed the senior book discussion group, which has been meeting monthly for 12 years. She said members have come and gone over the years, and they don’t always like the books she picks, but they always have a good discussion.

Her most recent creation is the cookbook club at Gales Ferry. So far the most popular potlucks have been from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa series of cookbooks, and the next meeting on Dec. 4 is a holiday tea party, with patrons signing up for recipes from Dorie Greenspan’s “Dorie’s Cookies.”

“It may not be so much about books, but cookbooks are books in the library, too,” she said. “It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve been fed very well.”

Osborne said she isn’t sure yet how she’ll spend her retirement but her husband also is retiring, so they may do some traveling. They purchased a house in Niantic last year, so she’ll still be local enough to attend the cookbook club, this time as a patron.

It’s “a really enjoyable way to have spent my working life, and I’ve met a lot of really nice people along the way,” she said.