Library Development Specialist Cassandra Artale is retiring after more than 30 years of service at the New York State Library. Her retirement will be effective June 19, 2014 and her last day in the office will be June 18.
Ms. Artale began her first State Library position in 1979, as School and Youth Services Librarian for the State Library’s Talking Book and Braille Library, the regional library which serves upstate NY in the National Library Service for the Blind & Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress network. After administering statewide school and youth services programs for TBBL, she joined the Library Development Team in 2000 as a Library Development Specialist. Cassie has worked tirelessly over the past 14 years to improve and enhance statewide library-based adult literacy, family literacy and outreach programs. In addition, she has also provided outstanding leadership and coordination for the State Library’s public library systems and school library systems programs as the Team Leader for Library Development’s Outreach, Networking and Regional Advisory Services Team since 2010.
Under Ms. Artale’s thoughtful and expert leadership, the State Library’s statewide outreach services programs have served the millions of New Yorkers who face special challenges in accessing the library services they need. Ms. Artale has worked closely with the 23 public library system outreach coordinators to bring library services to target groups such as: persons who are educationally disadvantaged, members of ethnic or minority groups in need of special library services, the unemployed and those in need of job placement assistance, people who live in areas underserved by a library, or people who are blind, physically disabled, have developmental or learning disabilities, or those who are aged or confined in institutions. She has extended library services to inmates through the public library system services for State correctional facility libraries program and the county jails program. She also manages New York State’s Indian Libraries program, working directly with the two public libraries serving Native Americans living on the St. Regis-Mohawk and Seneca Nation reservations.
Ms. Artale provided statewide leadership for the 2007/2008 award-winning Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation/Webjunction Spanish Language Outreach Program, which trained hundreds of public library workers to bring library services to Spanish-speakers and their families. She has also led a number of cross-cutting work teams at the State Library, including the team that is currently developing the framework for the new 2016-2021 library system five-year plan of service.
In addition to her statewide services program management responsibilities, Ms. Artale has ably represented the State Education Department, the New York State Library and New York’s libraries as the official liaison to several state and federal agencies and organizations, including the NYS Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, 2-1-1 New York, and the Literacy New York Board of Directors. She works collaboratively with agencies such as the NYS Department of Health, the NYS Office for the Aging, the NYS Labor Department, the SED Office of Adult and Continuing Education Services and most recently, US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) to help library staff provide current information to their communities through use of e-government resources and contact with federal and community services providers.
Ms. Artale’s ability to relate to library users, librarians, library trustees, local government officials and community leaders and their unique concerns have been invaluable assets to the State Library, to the State Education Department and to the hundreds of libraries and systems that she has worked with over the years. Her deep passion for libraries and her thorough understanding of the positive life-changing impacts that libraries and library staff can have on people from all walks of life will be sorely missed.
In addition to her work at the State Library, Ms. Artale has also worked for the Upper Hudson Library System as a Job Information Center Librarian and at the Bethlehem Public Library in Delmar, New York as a Special Collections Librarian. She has an MLS from the State University of New York at Albany and a BA from Southern Illinois University.
Cassie is looking forward to traveling with her husband and volunteering to help early elementary school students with their reading. Please take an opportunity to wish Cassie well as she begins this exciting new phase of her life. Cassie’s email address is cartale@mail.nysed.gov.