Editor's Note: This is the sixth in a series of profiles of Fairfield's Town Department Heads to define who our town employees are and what their positions entail.

Once upon a time, libraries were places where people went to borrow a book.
While they were there, "Shhhhhh!" said the librarian.
But that was a long, long time ago.
Today, people still go to borrow a book-and dancing on the tables is still discouraged-for one thing, the people working there with laptops will be annoyed. But a library is also a place to go to see a funny movie, or a scary one, to take a class on using a computer, to discuss books, to hear music or a lecture on the six wives of Henry VIII, to get help with homework, or to attend seminars on how to find a job.
It is a place where there is a gallery of original art.
Libraries may be THE place to go for books and information, but they have also become community gathering places and the downtown Fairfield Public Library is an exceptionally beautiful and inviting one. Renovations that began in December of 2003 and finished in July 2005 created a contemporary exterior that blended with the traditional Georgian design. Ten thousand square feet were added to create a total of 60,000 very tastefully renovated ones.
Inside, three linked periodical reading rooms with at least eight comfy chairs in each open to the art gallery. Throughout the library, half-a-dozen windowed study rooms are available and can be reserved in advance.
Thanks to the Friends of the Fairfield Library the art gallery features local artists.
Well-known children's authors and illustrators, Leonard Everett Fisher, Victoria Kann, and Lori Lohstoeter, and Hans Wilhelm share the space now through April 19.
The Friends of the Library also fund the One Book-One Town program, a neat co-mingling of literature with community. "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick is this year's book. The author, himself, will speak to the community on March 25 at Fairfield Warde High School. (Reservations necessary.) Many other events, including tours of Grand Central Terminal have been planned around the book. Last one is this Saturday morning.
"Fairfield Plays Hollywood" is a series that presents a movie with a discussion that follows. The theme this spring is Film Noir and Screwball Comedy. "Bringing Up Baby" plays March 22 and "Nightmare Alley" plays April 5, both on Sundays at 2 p.m.
Less mainstream cinema is discussed in the Foreign and Fringe Films series presented Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m.
The Soundwaves Concert Series happens twice each spring and fall, thanks again to those generous Friends of the Fairfield Public Library. "Bach to the Future" concludes this series on Sunday, April 5 at 3 p.m.
A very popular lecturer is Dr. Mark Schenker of Yale University. His next series "Trauma and Transcendence" begins with a discussion of "The Handmaiden's Tale" on Thursday, April 2 and continues at two-week intervals with Toni Morrison's "Beloved," on April 16, then, "The Things They Carried," and finally, "The Reader" on May 7.
For those struggling to create The Great American Novel or just a few poems, there are writer's groups as well as a well-received yearly Writer's Conference.
Life isn't all literature and the library has frequent classes on how to use various computer programs, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
Jobs 2009 is a library outreach that began in January with a presentation called, "Good Resume, Bad Resume: Which One Do You Want?" The series continued with presentations on "Secrets of the Online Job Hunt" and "Advice from the Other Side of the HR Desk: How You Can Stand Out from the Crowd." There were ten presentations altogether and they may be in the past, but they are not gone forever. Podcasts of all ten sessions can be downloaded.
This original Jobs 2009 series was so well-attended, according to Library Director Maura Ritz, that the library will continue with ten different presentations into early June. The next two sessions feature Indeed.com on April 14 and LinkedIn on April 22. A list of the full Jobs 2009 series is available on the library's web site.
There is one branch library in Fairfield and it vies for title of busiest branch library in Connecticut with Turn of River Branch in Stamford. (The Pequot Library is a separate library but the two send books back and forth.) The Fairfield Woods Branch Library has its own programs. Librarian Nancy Coriaty focuses on "community topics," such as food, stress, gardening, or even "Hungarian Immigrants in Bridgeport and Fairfield," The latter is April 20 at 1 p.m.
The teen library at the branch really hops after school, as does the teen section of the down-town library. Homework help is offered, but board games are also played.
On Friday afternoons, the downtown teen librarian may even sponsor "Dance, Dance Revolution" or the extremely popular "Guitar Hero" in the large meeting room on the second floor.
For younger children, the downtown library is a very special place. It consists of spaces that look nothing like a library, but do look like a general store, a train station, Penfield Lighthouse, and of course, Dogwood trees. However, there are books everywhere. There's even a room filled with books for parents and teachers.
"In the past, children didn't come to the library until they could read," said the library's director, Maura Ritz. "Now, it's all about becoming a reader."
The whisper tubes and puppet theater allow children to practice skills necessary for reading. Crawling is a pre-reading skill, so there's a special room where the under-three crowd can explore lumpy padded paths.
A multitude of special programs for babies through fifth graders varies from story hour to knitting and can attract as many as forty children at a time. There is a special room just for storytelling and arts and crafts projects.
The library even provides a place for young parents to get together with other parents.
Despite all the community involvement, librarians still rule at what many people think of as their main skill: finding information. The Fairfield reference librarians field approximately 80,000 inquiries a year. They're happy to find the answers, but they also are happy to show others how to find information themselves.
A myriad of databases "really enable us to serve the public 24 hours a day," Ritz said, since these can be accessed from a home computer by using a library card, or from the library's own computers. Subjects include art and antiques, biography, business, genealogy, health, history, homework helpers, language, legal, literary, test preparation, periodicals, and science. A new addition to the databases is Vault Online Career Library.
Need to read a particular article in say The Wall Street Journal, but can't get to the library? It can also be accessed from your home computer by using your library card.
Books are even available from home. The library offers over 300 e-books that can be read on your home computer screen, or 150 audio-book that can be listened to on an MP3 player.
The library's budget is $4.2 million for the current year. Thirteen full-time professional librarians with a Master's Degree in Library Science are among the 31 full-time employees. They are supplemented by nearly 100 part-time employees who enable the library to be open seven days a week.
"We actually have a very lean staff here in Fairfield," Ritz said, pointing out that Greenwich has 1.86 full time staff for every 1,000 people who live there; Westport has 1.65; Wilton, 1.37; while Fairfield has .73.
As for the effect the depressed economy has had on Fairfield's important resource, "Libraries all across America are very busy now," Ritz said. In just the last six months of 2008, circulation for the two combined Fairfield libraries was up 7 percent; program attendance was up 24 percent; the number of cardholders, 10 percent and reference questions increased 12 percent. Double those percents and you have Fairfield's possible increases for 2009.
Ritz came to her career almost by accident. After college, she worked for a bank in Philadelphia where she had frequent contact with the corporate librarian. Thinking the librarian's job was interesting, she got her Master's Degree in Library Science at Drexel and when the bank's librarian left, she took over.
Living abroad with her husband and children followed, but when she returned, she realized that hours at a public library, rather than a corporate one, could fit in with raising her children.
Ritz is now in her eleventh year with Fairfield's library, having come as head of reference, then having become assistant director and, three years ago, Director.
Asked if she'd like to have the last word here, Ritz noted that only 50 percent of Fairfielders have library cards, "So, the rest of you come on down and sign up."
"Your card is a free ticket to everything the 21st century library has to offer. We're a lively place," Ritz said.