As one of the first people to reserve a Museum Pass at the Great Neck Library on August 1, 2009, I was thrilled and excited to be able to visit my choice of five local museums without any out-of-pocket expense. Great Neck’s program was preceded by similar programs in many Nassau County libraries, including Port Washington, which has 14 museum passes and is planning to add more.
With the passes, I made several visits to the Nassau County Museum of Art and Old Westbury Gardens, sometimes with a friend. I assumed the program would not only continue, but, as I had been told by staff members, would expand to include museums in New York City.
So I was quite shocked when the library board recently voted to discontinue the program because they did not find it cost effective and the director “felt it would be more appropriate to have a museum docent doing programs at the Library.” Today, four of our five museum passes have expired and one remains for a few months. After that, the Great Neck Library will be one of very few local libraries without such a program.
The director’s study on cost effectiveness found the program wanting, although she noted there was no way to determine how many people actually benefitted, since passes could be used for up to 6 people. She said it was more cost effective to order 43 copies of the book The Help or 9 DVDs of Avatar, since public usage was much greater.
In my opinion, this program was barely given a chance. Museum pass programs are available in 38 Nassau libraries, expanding in most of them, and were called “one of the best programs available to the public” by a staff member at the Port Washington Library. Our funding was from a library bequest, not from taxpayer funds, and the program was just getting off the ground, perhaps because it was not effectively publicized, or because patrons found the online reservation process difficult. Since Jan. 1, when passes were made available at the front desk, usage has gone up.
In my view, nothing is comparable to first hand experience with art. No book, no reproduction, no slide, no lecture can ever compare with the unique experience of viewing actual art in a museum or on site. My parents taking me to museums as a child had a lifelong positive effect and there are many parents today who strive to provide the same benefit for their children. In fact, the single most popular Nassau museum pass is for the Long Island Children’s Museum.
For adults and families who may not be able to afford current museum admissions (up to $20), the museum pass programs have been an enormous boon. The Freeport Library provides 16 different museum passes to residents, including the American Museum of Natural History, the Guggenheim, the Brooklyn Museum and the New York Botanical Garden. Other libraries include the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Jewish Museum, among others. What happened to Great Neck, a community long known for its strong cultural commitments?
If, like me, you believe this program is both important and highly beneficial to Great Neck library patrons and should be given another chance, please contact the Library Board and Director and express your views. I’m not sure this decision will be reversed, but hope that for the sake of our residents, the Great Neck Library will not be left behind while other libraries around Long Island, New York State and the country, provide this tremendous benefit to their patrons.
Diane Coffield
Great Neck
