New Jersey – Librarian Honored for 60 Years on the Job

Newark, New Jersey

Honored for Service — When William J. Dane began working at the Newark Public Library, Harry S. Truman was living in the White House.
Photo Credit: Sylwia Kapuscinski/The New York Times/Redux

William J. Dane, supervising librarian of the Newark Public Library and founding member of Local 2298 (Council 52), was recently recognized for his six decades of service.

Dane, the official guardian of the library's special collections, was also featured in December in The New York Times, which observed: “Even as Newark suffers through yet another budget crunch, Mr. Dane has leveraged a wispy budget to beef up the library's collection, which includes 23,000 prints, 5,000 posters and 1,000 autographs.”

In December, to honor Dane's years of employment, Library Director Wilma Grey bestowed upon him a “special recognition award for individual service.”

As guardian of the library's rarest treasures, it is Dane's job to make sure these fragile items are properly housed and protected from dampness and extreme heat. “It's a world-class collection,” he explains, “thanks to 115 years of enlightened collecting by devoted librarians and individuals who donated to the library because they wanted the books, prints and other items where they would be preserved and available to people, forever.”

Dane, 84, is a native of Concord, N.H. He got his start at the library in 1947 as a clerk in the art and music department upon his return from service with the Army during World War II. Besides earning a master's degree in library sciences at Drexel, Lane also studied the arts and art history at the Sorbonne in Paris, Harvard University and The Institute of Fine Arts/New York University.