Special to the Transcript
Cynthia Hastings, Candidate for Library Trustee?, has issued the following announcement:
“I am excited to be on the November 4 ballot as a candidate for the Board of Library Trustees. Library trustees oversee the operations of the Winthrop Public Library and Museum and approve the budget.
I believe that public libraries are the most democratic institutions that towns have. Everyone has equal access to the information and programs that public libraries offer. They are free and open to all. Public libraries are an essential part of a strong community. They are bastions of knowledge and a collaborative investment in education and learning that must be preserved and supported regardless of whatever is happening in the world.
My goal as a library trustee is to help preserve Winthrop’s “temple of knowledge,” promote its many available resources (including its museum of the town’s history), help solve any problems that may crop up in the future, and ensure that it serves the community in the ways that the people want, and those ways will be ever-changing. For example, some public libraries in Massachusetts contain smaller “Lending Libraries of Things” and lend patrons such things as tools, sewing machines, ladders, a telescope, musical instruments, and baking pans. I hope that a Library of Things will be possible within the Winthrop Public Library in the not-too-distant future.
I grew up in Amherst, MA. My husband, Tom Derderian, and I have lived in Winthrop for 38 years. I loved serving as a Winthrop Town Meeting member. Our two daughters, Jane and Hattie, attended Winthrop public schools and made good use of the Winthrop Public Library and Museum. I graduated from Wheaton College in Norton, MA, with a B.A. degree in biology and chemistry and subsequently spent 45 years in the publishing industry. I recently retired after 20 years as the manuscript and production editor at the New England Journal of Medicine. I also worked for many years at Little, Brown and Company as the manager of international sales and translation rights in the medical books division, which involved several business trips to the annual, world-renowned Frankfurt Book Fair, in Germany.
If you reside in Winthrop, you can get a library card, and then an astonishing array of resources will be accessible to you through the Winthrop Public Library and Museum (workshops, art exhibits, live music, book clubs, Kanopy movie streaming service, the museum of Winthrop history, and more) – all free! I am eager to serve as a library trustee and would appreciate your vote for me on November 4.”