It’s an hour before the Dolton Public Library opens, and country music is blaring through the public-address system.
Relative quiet and order will settle on the library by 9 a.m. as students and residents arrive to delve into their work or enjoy a favorite book. But circulation supervisor Phyllis Zagotta confesses that this is “not a real quiet library.”
In fact, she says, “sometimes the staff is noisier than the patrons.”
According to Zagotta, “the closeness of the people who work together” at the library sets a congenial tone that patrons find inviting.
“This library is known for its friendliness throughout the Suburban Library System,” she says.
Zagotta has worked there for 17 years as a circulation clerk and, for the last five years, as the supervisor of the circulation department.
Such long stays are not rare, she says. “You know, nobody leaves libraries.” As evidence, she mentions that a number of her clerks each has spent more than 10 years at the library. “They don’t leave,” she says. “Nobody leaves.”
Ruth Ann Wallish, the youth services librarian, adds with a laugh, “You have to die to get out of here!”
Zagotta oversees the front desk, which makes her the library’s chief liaison with the public.
“My job, I would say, is strictly the public-checking in, checking out books and all the little nitty-gritty things that go with running the desk,” she says.
She tries to give the patrons the sort of warm and receptive experience that kindled her appreciation for libraries as a child, Zagotta says.
Her passion for books and a long affinity for libraries is what led her to work at the Dolton library.
“As a child,” she says, “we used to walk to the library all the time in Roseland. I loved libraries-always loved to read.”
During high school, she volunteered at the school library. However, it wasn’t until after her two daughters were in elementary school that she pursued a career as a librarian.
Zagotta grew up in the Roseland community on Chicago’s Far South Side and graduated from St. Willibrord School. While playing miniature golf when she was 15, she met a 17-year-old student who was attending De La Salle High School in Chicago. She and Donald Zagotta were married five years later.
The couple, who moved to Dolton in 1962, have been married for 36 years and have four children. “I sort of have three families,” Zagotta says, noting that their two daughters are in their 30s, a son is in his 20s and the second son is in his teens. They also have three grandchildren.
Two years ago, the Zagottas and their youngest son moved to Crown Point, Ind. Although she and her husband don’t plan to retire for another three to four years, she says, they decided to get a head start after visiting the town and finding the perfect home. Zagotta commutes 40 minutes (each way). Donald Zagotta commutes to Chicago; he is a machinist at a paint company.
In 1970, Zagotta enrolled in Thorton Community College (now South Suburban College) to pursue a joint teacher’s-assistant/library-assistant associate’s degree.
During her first semester, however, she became pregnant; for the next six years, she continued her studies on a part-time basis.
Then while working to complete her dual practicum, Zagotta again became pregnant. After graduating, she opted for library science over teaching-in working on the teaching practicum, she had discovered she didn’t like spending the day in one room.
“I had been around kids for too long at home!” she says, laughing.
She graduated in 1976 as a paraprofessional in library science and was hired as a part-time circulation clerk at the Dolton library, where she had done her practicum.
Because her pregnancy was so advanced, Zagotta was assigned to the front desk, where she typed card-catalog entries. In fact, she says, so much of her time was spent typing that patrons often would kid that her child would be born a typist.
After a six-week maternity leave, Zagotta returned again part time. She gradually increased her hours but still only worked part time the next few years.
She was named circulation department supervisor when the previous supervisor retired.
“This is where I want to be,” Zagotta says of the circulation department. “I enjoy supervising,” she adds. Circulation is the largest department in the library; there are 11 clerks and five high-school pages. (The total library staff is 39; 11 of them are full-time.) Although her schedule is primarily Monday through Friday, she works every third Saturday and, during the school year, an occasional Sunday.
Being able to interact with the patrons is one reason she likes her job, Zagotta says. Although circulation supervisors often are preoccupied with behind-the-scenes work, such as library statistics and scheduling, she prefers to be at the front desk.
“She does her busy work at the back, and then when she’s finished with that, she’s right in there-sleeves rolled up-and she’s right with us,” says Judy Lovegren, who has been a circulation clerk for more than seven years.
“I like that contact,” Zagotta says. “You get a little shell shocked, but I love it. You couldn’t take me away from it.”
As Jean Novelli, the administrative librarian, notes, the people in the circulation department are “the front lines.”
There are times that Zagotta must mediate mini-crises. Lost, damaged or overdue books are the most frequent cause of discontent, she says.
For example, Novelli says, after a grace period-usually three overdue notices and phone calls over approximately two months-Dolton transfers patrons’ accounts to a collection agency. As a result, Zagotta adds, there often is tension.
“I have to be the peacemaker,” she says, to make sure the library is satisfied.
As mediator, she also must ensure that the patrons are satisfied. “You don’t want to discourage (people) from coming to the library just because they’ve maybe been negligent one time in returning their books.”
Zagotta has seen the library space grow from a small building of about 8,000 square feet to one with about 24,000 square feet. Because of its growing collection-“We became a very big library” in a small place, she says-it was enlarged in 1979.
Before that, “a lot of our books had to go into storage because there wasn’t enough room on the shelves,” she says.
“We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve been able to become the size that we are,” she says. “And that’s due to the . . . people in the community who have supported their library through the years.
The library has about 13,000 card holders-more than 50 percent of the town’s population of 24,000. As many as 15,000 items per month are circulated. The library has more than 98,000 books and approximately 300 magazine subscriptions, 1,300 records, 1,200 cassettes, 900 videos, 500 CDs and 400 talking books.
Looking back on her years at the library, then ahead to retirement, Zagotta says of the patrons and staff: “I think the thing I’ll remember most are the people.”
