Renewal of a community hub

In a typical introductory English language tutoring session, Maplewood New Americans Librarian Brian DiNitto uses what he calls the cigar boxes. The boxes contain random small objects, which DiNitto asks the individual to describe.

“We just open this up and talk about the color, the shape. Just to start practicing English. Cars,” he says, pointing at a yellow toy automobile, “are very popular. Especially with guys. There’s a lot of terminology to know. Wheels, windshield, window.”

Instead of teaching his English as a New Language classes in a shared community meeting space, DiNitto has his own dedicated area, a product of the two-year, $8.5 million expansion of the Maplewood Community Library, a branch the city government holds up as a pillar of the community.

This article, the second in a series on the Maplewood neighborhood, is part of the Rochester Beacon’s From the Ground Up project.

The library’s sterling reputation for embracing the community has persisted over decades and across many staffing changes. Adult residents arrive trusting that they will receive help on job applications or that new American residents will be able to practice their English language skills in a free class.

Following their parents who are taking classes or coming after school lets out, younger visitors are visibly excited to enter the building. Since the renovations concluded and the library reopened three months ago, they now congregate in the children’s section, an area constructed based on their own recommendations taken from a town hall style brainstorming session.

Based on those recommendations, it now includes cubby holes, a reading nook, and an outdoor play area complete with a small garden and, in some children’s opinion, the most important of all, a four square court.

(Admittedly, Children’s Librarian Mark Hafer did put his foot down at requests for a ball pit as his question of “Who’s going to clean it?” was not met with any volunteers from the younger visitors.)

Branch Supervisor Johanna Buran, who has been at the Maplewood library for over 15 years, frequently calls the library “Maplewood’s living room.” For her, the work that goes into creating that space is simple. It may be hard work at times, but it is not complicated.

“It’s just basically getting to know them. Knowing their names and providing a space where they feel welcome and safe,” she says of the library’s patrons. “And after a while, a lot of them, especially the kids, will feel like it’s their living room because they’ve been coming here for years and are familiar with everyone here.”

Buran receives a lot of praise from community groups such as the Maplewood Neighborhood Association for her frequent and consistent communication at meetings. To her, it is just another part of the job and another way to stay connected and present.

It is also an attitude that seems to emanate through the rest of the staff.

“It’s not like the city school district over at Oasis. They have pre-tests. They have five levels of instruction there,” DiNitto says. “I call mine ‘informal language learning.’ I take whoever comes in. I work with someone on the alphabet, names of fruits and vegetables, on past, present tense, whatever they need. We’ll adapt their lessons to whatever where their work is. We have a man who actually runs a tree service. So, I came up with, give me a sheet of 12 pictures of items from the tree service.

“Another woman works with sewing machines. That’s her job. So, we talked about sewing machine terminology and all the different parts. We try to tailor it to what their interests are,” he adds. “We’re always tweaking to try to find what works best.”

The renovation process

Before the renovations, the Maplewood library was mid-sized compared to the other nine other city branches. Although its circulation of library materials numbers were (and are) among the lowest, it is one of the busiest locations.

For example, Maplewood had 87,343 visitors in 2023, giving it the highest ratio of visitors per square foot. It also topped the number of computer hours, Wi-Fi logins, and group programs that year, demonstrating that many people were choosing to use the space in ways other than checking out books.

During the renovation process, the library temporarily moved to share space with Mary’s Place, a refugee outreach center in the Holy Rosary Church Complex between Lexington and Driving Park avenues. It served as a temporary home for two years, from June 2024 to this July.

Staff say that the move actually had unintended benefits, such as connecting Mary’s Place clients with library services and introducing the branch to families who live farther south in the Edgerton neighborhood. Although the number of visitors tapered off in 2024, the number of group programs held rose from 392 to 410.

The $8.5 million renovation—the first at the library since 1959—expanded the building’s footprint by about 2,700 square feet to nearly 9,700 square feet. Part of this slightly increased the parking lot and its accessible spaces. An enclosed community area for large groups to meet as well as two smaller rooms, good for taking calls or smaller group tutoring sessions, were also added along with a separate maker’s space and classroom location.

Recalling pre-renovation moments, DiNitto says he was glad that the library saw so much use, but is also grateful that they no longer run into noise issues when his classes overlap with other community events.

Anecdotally, library staffers have noticed that the numbers have not yet bounced back to their pre-renovation levels but have seen some visitors follow them from Mary’s Place back to Dewey Avenue. They are confident even more regulars will return to their patterns as time progresses.

“I’ve heard a few complaints along the lines of, ‘You were closer to my house, why’d you have to move so far away?’” says DiNitto.

The Maplewood branch serves over 7,000 patrons on a monthly basis, the city says. 

Meeting people where they are

Staffers agree that the phrase “meeting people where they are” can feel overused. However, the open and flexible approach it suggests by listening and reacting to what people need is still a perfect way to build community.

At the Maplewood library, English classes continue to be one of the most popular services. About 29% of Maplewood residents are foreign-born, and the adjacent neighborhoods the library also serves—Edgerton, Brown Square, and Upper Falls—all also have over 30% of residents born outside the United States. The most common regions of origin are Southeast Asia, Eastern Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Many residents are also refugees. Catholic Charities Family and Community Services, the refugee sponsoring agency in the area, says that over 15,000 refugees have found homes in Rochester since 1980. The agency’s annual reports show that in 2024, the year before refugee resettlement was halted and program funding was frozen by the Trump administration, it resettled 1,200 refugees, the largest number since 2016. 

DiNitto teaches both ENL classes and a 16-week citizenship course in addition to one-on-one tutoring and holding open office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays for any type of issue. He offers evening classes as well in order to accommodate work schedules.

“They were working during the day and they couldn’t make the day classes. So, we do evening classes right now three nights a week,” he says. “We also can hold Zoom meetings where we have people from Turkmenistan, Cameroon, all different countries. Sometimes the parents don’t have a car. Maybe they have five kids. They might not even live in the city of Rochester. But as long as they live in Monroe County, we can work with them.”

His background of 20 years in the Rochester City School District as a math and technology teacher, as well as his 10 years in other library positions, are fully apparent in the way DiNitto speaks about guiding instruction collaboratively.

His technology education background gives an added bonus to the library as he also serves as the resident guru for all tech-related snafus such as unruly printers or uncooperative computer systems. Many Maplewood customers also require faxing help for government documents.

DiNitto’s most recent triumph was helping set up a new phone freshly bought and transported to the library from Walmart. The process entailed setting up a new Gmail account as well.

“Brian is outstanding. He’s super patient with people and will talk about all of the steps. He does not assume that you know,” says Buran. “Because you shouldn’t make assumptions that people have a certain level of knowledge and access to electronics. They don’t always in this neighborhood.

“And I think a lot of people really just love him for that. ‘Oh, is Brian here?’” she says, imitating a common response.

DiNitto accepts the praise somewhat bashfully. “I just teach them how to be independent, how to do things on their own at home,” he says, before excusing himself to help a student with a connection issue on Zoom.

Connecting with young people

In the corner directly opposite DiNitto’s classroom, it is immediately clear that Hafer is both trusted and appreciated by the many young visitors who come to use the space both after school and on the weekends. Upon entering the building, children are often in a hurry to get to the back as soon as possible to read, play, and learn.

“If you’re not willing to sit down on the ground and not worry about your shoes or your clothes getting covered in chalk, then it’s like, ‘Oh, this guy’s a stiff,’” says Hafer, discussing his approach to building trust and appreciation. “You treat them like they should be here. This is their space, so how can you help them?”

“Mark’s really great because he really encourages them to have ownership of the space,” Buran observes. “Imparting how important it is to take care of your neighborhood and appreciating the outside and being active.”

Hafer, whose position was recently upgraded from part-time to full-time, shares an excitement about the outdoor space with visiting children, especially after realizing that the installed black fence could double as a chalkboard.

“The kids started drawing on it and I was, like, ‘Oh, no, I don’t know how to feel about this.’ But then I went over, and saw, ‘Oh, it comes right off,’” says Hafer. “So, we just serendipitously got a giant chalkboard.”

Next to the fence is the sunflower garden project, which was completed over the summer. The flowers are still visible from the new outdoor play space, with several young visitors pointing excitedly to the respective plant they helped grow. Hafer says his eventual plan is to expand even further and grow different kinds of plants.

This could be even more integrated into the library with the new maker’s space, which has a sink (with stepstool), food prep area, and refrigerator. Already Foodlink has done programming there, but the library hopes to grow it even further with both foods, as well as arts and crafts.

Looking ahead

The renovation and expansion comes at a time of federal actions that could impact both Maplewood’s library and its residents.

The Trump administration’s attempt to gut the Institute of Museum and Library Services ended after it withdrew its appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that barred the dismantling of IMLS.

Although the Rochester and Monroe County Library system primarily gets its funding from state sources, money from the IMLS, which is the only federal agency that funds libraries, does eventually make its way to the city.

The IMLS battle and an increased number of book banning attempts have not had a direct impact on Maplewood or the Rochester public library system at large. However, they do point to what some perceive as a growing hostile attitude toward libraries.

“I think we stand with the fact that our libraries are here to serve everyone. That’s what we do,” says BJ Scanlon, deputy director of community libraries. “There’s no quiz, no test to come in and use the space. You don’t have to spend money. You don’t have to buy anything.

“This is one of the places that has a free bathroom you can use. You can use the water fountain, the heating, the cooling. We’re here to provide. And that’s what we’ll continue to do regardless of what the world does.”

That is the attitude of the Maplewood library too, which continues to serve the community and deepen its connections. For example, Hafer this summer took kids to the Memorial Art Gallery and newly opened Maplewood Nature Center, where he often does story time as well.

Halloween decorations have also begun to be put up all over the library, with the haunted house an epic and famed affair at the library. Last year, the theme was haunted pirates and featured a full-size shark.

“One (young patron) said to me, ‘You’re going to do a Halloween haunted house, right? Because my niece hasn’t done it and she has to do it.’ So, I think they see it from the other kids, and other kids talk it up,” says Buran.

“That’s part of our discussion with the adults,” DiNitto says. “We talk about how we celebrate it, what we know about it. We get a lot of cultural discussion where we learn about their cultures, and they share what they do in their cultures.”

The only thing Buran is disappointed by is the fact that the branch was not able to give away its annual back-to-school backpacks, another tradition some children look forward to.

“We didn’t do that this year, though. We weren’t organized,” she says. “We do a coat drive and gloves and hats. So, we’re hoping to do that at least. It’s another chance for us to help in our own way.”

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist. The From the Ground Up project is funded by the ESL Charitable Foundation.

The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].