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Elizabeth Bartlett: By the Book

Wisdom doesn’t go out of style, so what Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote some 2,000 years ago works well for Elizabeth Bartlett today: If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. Cicero did and so does Elizabeth Bartlett. (Okay, Latin enthusiasts, here it is: Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil.)

Elizabeth is assistant director and director of Children’s Services at the Ivoryton Library and she is also a certified master gardener who completed a 16-week program at a University of Connecticut Extension facility in New Haven. But her love of gardens goes back to childhood. In fact, it was then that a neighbor, knowing her interest, told her about the Cicero passage, which she quotes readily to a visitor.

“I’ve been gardening all my life. I think it’s in my blood,” Elizabeth says, noting she still has a clump of peonies inherited from her great grandmother. “I move a portion of the peonies with me wherever I’ve been.”

She likes to take cuttings when a plant catches her eye and has a section of her garden devoted to cultivating them. She also has a way of making sure she doesn’t have more greenery than her garden can accommodate.

“I’ve started gardening wiser,” she says. “I give plants to friends.”

Elizabeth brings gardening and the outdoors into the activities that she does with children at the library, including a butterfly hatching project, with eggs laid on milkweed that grows near the library.

“We watch for the eggs and bring them into a butterfly habitat,” she says, showing a circular net container. “After the butterflies hatch and are two days old, we release them.”

Elizabeth posts the release date and time on the library’s Facebook page and puts up announcements so patrons can come.

According to Elizabeth, summers when children are out of school are among the busiest times for the young people’s room at the library. There is the summer reading program, about to conclude with a hula-hoop party on Saturday, Aug. 11 in conjunction with the reading program at the Essex Library, and a writing challenge Elizabeth has initiated, as well as ongoing activities like story hour and a Lego project that combines the iconic building blocks with a computer program that photographs what participants have built so they can make comic-style talk bubbles and write stories to go along with their creations.

And all that activity is done with what was once taboo in libraries: noise.

“We love noise and happy laughter,” she says.

Elizabeth, who lives in Centerbrook, started at the library in 2012, when Loretta McCluskey, then a library trustee, suggested that she consider becoming the children’s librarian.

“I have three children and I love books and am a huge fan of libraries,” Elizabeth says.

She has fond memories of going to the library in Old Saybrook, where she grew up, as a child.

“I was attached to Mrs. Hess the librarian and I loved going there after school,” she remembers.

Still, she admits that her training was in another field.

“My background is anything but library,” she says.

She has a degree in fine arts and interior design from the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford and started her professional career as an interior design consultant at Fiorelli’s, a now-closed furniture store in Old Saybrook.

Though they seem unrelated, Elizabeth sees connections between her design work and her library career, beyond creating the craft projects that are a regular part of activities for young children.

“Making displays interesting and inviting; everything dovetails,” she says, pointing out a verbal similarity, at least. “Dovetails, that’s a furniture word.”

She has contemplated going back for a library degree, but with two teenage daughters and a seven-year-old son, she says their ongoing educations are the primary consideration.

“I’ll have to put that off to the future, and then maybe my time will come again,” she says, but adds she regrets she never thought of it when she was in school. “I wish somebody had suggested being a librarian to me years ago.”

Elizabeth faced an unexpected health challenge two years ago, when she had an intense headache that wouldn’t go away.

“I felt weird so I went to the clinic,” she recalls.

She spent the next 10 days in the hospital recovering from a stroke, which she suspects may have been stress-related. In addition to regular tri-monthly visits to a neurologist, she has tried to step back from some of her many activities, but she still a full schedule.

She gave up being one of the Centerbrook Islanders, the group that weeds and landscapes the traffic islands where routes 153 and 154 intersect, and she no longer does summer story time with Essex Park & Recreation. She remains a member of the Essex Garden Club, though she no longer heads its junior activities’ program. Yet, she has added another major youth activity to her schedule: She is now a cubmaster of Cub Scout Pack 4, in Essex. Her son, now going into the 2nd grade, is a member of the pack.

“My daughters were girl scouts and I wanted him to have the same opportunity,” she says.

In addition, Elizabeth has just started this summer taking piano lessons with Tom Briggs at the Community Music School in Centerbrook.

“It is something new and I love music, all kinds of music,” she says.

Elizabeth also has a second job—part-time, as is her job at the Ivoryton Library. She works at the Connecticut College Children’s program, a preschool of the college campus that not only serves a diverse youthful population but gives students interested in the field a chance for hands-on work.

She says the position is a good fit for her because it incorporates the same kind of work she does at the Ivoryton Library with young children.

“We sing songs, read, do crafts,” she explains.

And with her penchant for tying things together, she is looking forward to taking the cub scouts to visit the Connecticut College Arboretum.

At the library, Elizabeth has expanded the children’s area to include books on subjects of interest to parents. She has added books on food allergies (a subject in which parents have expressed interest) as well as books on autism and the autism spectrum, an area she first became interested in when babysitting for an autistic child when she was in high school. Along with pint-sized chairs for children, there are comfortable chairs for adults in the children’s room, and a coffee maker.

“I think of the library as an extension of home,” Elizabeth says.

And that brings this story full circle, back to Cicero, who was also interested in the relationship between books and living quarters. A quotation now found on everything from coffee mugs to T-shirts, credited to Cicero (although scholars dispute the attribution) proclaims: A room without books is like a body without a soul.

For more information on programs at the Ivoryton Library, visit www.ivorytonlibrary.org.