The Vineyard’s libraries are always on the move.
Sometimes that movement is literal. The Vineyard Haven library is undergoing a major renovation, while the Edgartown library marked the 10th anniversary of its new building last month.
But more often, the library’s movements are less visible. Across the Island, libraries are evolving their programs to meet shifting community needs, while grappling with emerging challenges with artificial intelligence and book bans.
On Tuesday, all six Island library directors from around the Island took part in a roundtable discussion in the Vineyard Gazette newsroom to offer a look beyond the stacks. The event was part of the Gazette’s Tuesdays in the Newsroom series and was moderated by editor Bill Eville.
“So much of what we did when I started working in libraries is unrecognizable today,” said Edgartown library director Lisa Sherman.
In addition to offering books, the libraries offer a plethora of programs each day, hosting everything from fiber arts groups to yoga sessions, cooking classes, choir rehearsals and Magic: The Gathering sessions. Their annual events, such as the Oak Bluffs Library’s Putts and Pints mini golf event and Vineyard Haven Library’s animal handler show, provide offseason entertainment.
They also lend out clam rakes, sewing machines and free passes to museums both on-Island and the mainland.
In some instances, they are on the front lines of providing life-saving assistance. This winter the West Tisbury Library turned into a warming center, giving the people a place to find respite during the coldest days. The library also provides free meals all year long through its food pantry, and extra meals during school breaks so students, families and community members can continue to get free meals.
The directors said they meet often throughout the year to brainstorm additional ways they can meet community needs, sometimes pooling their resources to provide the most help.
Many of the directors started their careers on the Island.
Ms. Sherman’s 18 years in the field started when she took a part time job shelving VHS tapes in the old Edgartown library basement while visiting over the summer. Alexandra Pratt came to the Island after graduating from college to waitress, and also worked for Morning Glory Farm before taking a part-time job at the West Tisbury Library, where she is now the director.
Aquinnah’s library director Rosa Parker started working in libraries on the Island when she was 18 years old. She now runs the Aquinnah library, a small red building in the town’s center that used to be a school before it closed in 1968 due to low enrollment.
“It still has the original blackboard in it,” Ms. Parker said.
Vineyard Haven library director Amy Ryan’s origins go back to high school when she volunteered at her local library for her National Honor Society volunteer requirement. She ended up getting a master's degree and was a librarian at the New York Times before coming to the Vineyard.
“At some point the news just got terribly, terribly depressing and sad,” Ms. Ryan said. “I thought I’d like to do something a little different.”
Ruth Konigsberg is a former journalist who switched over to librarianship, where she found opportunities to expand her commitment to information integrity. She is now the director of the Chilmark Library.
Oak Bluffs library director Allyson Malik worked as an attorney in Washington D.C., where the job was so demanding she said she “lost parts of her soul.” She left the legal industry to work as a reference librarian in Maryland. During her first year on the job she fell in love with another librarian, Rizwan Malik. The library couple married and moved to the Vineyard; Mr. Malik is the reference and technology librarian at the Edgartown Library.
“There’s many great things to be found in a library, including true love,” Ms. Malik said.
The directors said there are many challenges facing libraries across the country, and locally they are already dealing with the rise in material written by artificial intelligence.
Ms. Malik said that as the technology advances it will be more difficult for librarians — and publishers — to identify when something is written by AI rather than a human being. She is worried that AI books will soon monopolize space on library shelves.
Instead of discarding human-produced work, a regular process all libraries undertake as new books come in, the Oak Bluffs library launched what they call a Community Library this year, where volunteers keep 20 to 30 books in their homes for the library to access when patrons place them on hold.
“It’s like an interlibrary loan but instead of working with another library, we’re working with our community,” Ms. Malik said.
The goal is to have key books as primary sources known to be written by humans close at hand.
Ms. Pratt added that several people each day come into the West Tisbury library needing help with digital literacy. She said librarians steer people away from referencing AI overviews and suggest alternatives to search engines and messaging platforms that have less of a digital footprint.
The Chilmark Library, which also serves as the library for the Chilmark School, will be hosting digital literacy lessons for the students next year.
The librarians also addressed book banning, which has risen drastically across the country in recent years. The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners reported that formal challenges to library materials, programs and services have increased by 50 per cent since FY2023.
Though the directors didn’t know of any banned materials on the Vineyard, the directors are taking preventative actions. The Oak Bluffs library recently changed its policy to only allow residents or property owners to challenge material, opposed to any card member.
“It’s those folks who paid for the collection to be on the shelves in the first place,” Ms. Malik said.
“We changed our language to require that people have to have read the material,” Ms. Sherman added.
The directors assured the audience that reading is also alive and well on the Vineyard. They said the most popular book across all Vineyard libraries as of late is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
Former librarians filled the audience and many shared stories from their time stacking shelves.
Susan Levine worked in school libraries and a hospital’s clinical library for much of her life. She thanked the library directors for their work developing programs and meeting the community’s needs.
“You all are the gold standard,” Ms. Levine said.
This article appears in April 10, 2026.
It would be interesting to see the financial cost to the island for all these libraries. The salary alone of this group photo and all the people that work for them would be an eye-opener for most people. That does not include the cost of upkeep of all the buildings and the additions that keep happening to them. There is no other 100mi.² rural place in this country that has so much duplication of resources as here. The taxpayers need some relief and regionalization is the only way we’re going to achieve that. Let’s not forget the retirement benefits that get paid out to all of the people as well. It is a deserved benefit, but it is still a cost. For every one person working there’s usually two or three people who had that position before in retirement that is collecting taxpayer money. Stop the madness regionalize.
Bob, if you want to do a cost/benefit analysis I believe the benefits…both tangible and intangible outweighs costs by far. Libraries and the staff are more precious than gold.
This article only begins to cover the services offered by our Island libraries for all ages and many interests. There is little duplication as books are passed throughout the system as requested and other servicces vary from one town to another. For many folks the town libraries are within walking or biking distance. Thank you to all our hard working librarians