NORTHAMPTON — Forbes Library raised more than $46,000 during its recent Giving Day fundraiser — the most ever generated through the annual campaign — to create a youth programming room as a tribute to former Board of Trustees President Russ Carrier’s 44 years of service.
Carrier, 78, stepped away earlier this year from his more than four decades as a library trustee, including 43 years as president. In his honor — and as part of an effort to make the library more of a community space for visitors — Forbes Library hosted its Library Giving Day fundraiser last month.
First elected to the board of trustees in 1981, when he was chosen as president of the board at his very first meeting, Carrier’s leadership helped carry Forbes Library through every major improvement over the course of four decades.
In an interview with the Gazette, Carrier referred to the library as his fourth child.
“When you get to be my age, you make more than a few mistakes in life, but I feel like the library is one of the things that I basically mostly gotten right,” Carrier remarked. “I was really inspired in a lot of ways, by Charles Forbes. When you read his thoughts about what his vision was for the library, it just really spoke to me … I was really moved by his belief in open-mindedness, critical thinking and science.”
The youth room, which opened last month, serves as a gathering place for young people of all ages to attend free library programs such as story time, gaming clubs, crafting workshops and book discussions.
Carrier said he hopes the space will provide community resources to an often underrepresented age group. He said that with public libraries across the county facing financial hardship nationwide, there is a push to transform the spaces into community resource areas.
“It serves an age group that’s really important, and sometimes really kind of gets lost in public libraries. Having a special area that’s got the latest technology and decor will be really important and inviting as a public service to the community at-large,” Carrier said. “One of the things that the library, the trustees, realized a number of years ago was a lot of libraries were in trouble across the U.S. and in other countries as well. What we concluded was the way to avoid that was to turn the library into more of a community resource, rather than just a place to go and do research and grab a book or a magazine.”
Library Director Lisa Downing credited Carrier’s accomplishments with the Massachusetts Library Trustee Association naming Forbes the Library Trustee of the Year in 2022.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, Carrier guided the library through a decade of ambitious renovations that restored the historic building and redesigned its infrastructure floor-by-floor. Downing, in a written statement, noted that he introduced computer technology throughout the library during this time.
Carrier also led the library through its renovation of the Children’s Department’s in 2010 and spearheaded a campaign to fund an accessible elevator at the library’s front entrance. He more recently led a fundraising effort to renovate spaces for teens and children at Forbes and helped plan a redesign of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum.
“We found the library building was really in disrepair; it had been decades of really not being kept up properly,” he said. “It took a lot of people, it wasn’t just me, but I tried to lead the effort to totally renovate the building inside and out, and work on the grounds as well, so that it looks and functions like it does today. I always kept in mind that you wanted to modernize it, but also to make sure that people really appreciated that late 19th century Victorian architecture.”
Describing capital campaigns and large-scale renovations as being one of Carrier’s “signature accomplishments” in recent years, Downing spoke to just how appropriate it was that the youth room be opened in his honor.
“He’s very humble, and he always wants the needs of the library to come before any accolades for himself, even though he’s very, very deserving,” Downing said. “He was happy to be recognized as long as it is done in a way that will benefit the library and it was his idea to tie this fundraising initiative and the opening of this space.”
