YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – When Deborah Liptak was bringing her young children to story times at the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County’s Boardman branch years ago, she had no idea that one day she would be working for the library system.
“Never in a million years,” she reflects.
Liptak has served as PLYMC’s development director – its first – since 2002. She will step down from the position at the end of September. “It’s time,” she says.
Liptak, who earned an associate of applied business degree from Youngstown State University, credits her mother with encouraging her to go to college. Many employers in the 1970s were reluctant to hire a woman with a business degree but she was able to secure a position at the Touche Ross & Co. accounting firm and, later, Lanier Business Products as a marketing and support representative.
“I did that for about four years, and then I got married,” she recalls. They moved to St. Louis after her husband, Stephen, was transferred for work. They lived there for four years and had their daughter there before returning to the Youngstown area, where she got involved in community work.
That included at one point chairing a 2001 levy campaign for the library. She and her children, Stephanie and Matthew, had been regular patrons of PLYMC’s Boardman Branch. When the branch moved to its current location, 7680 Glenwood Ave., in 1992, the branch’s librarians invited her to the dedication.
“I believe in everything the library does, the services it provides, but literacy is key, she says. “Getting children to read at a young age is so, so important. I saw the benefits with my own kids.”
When the library established the development director position the following year, people in leadership urged her to apply. Upon being hired, one of her first tasks was to come up with a new image for the library and to get people “to see it in a different light” she recalls.
She prioritized getting out into the community to build relationships and make the public aware of all aspects of the library. Liptak became a regular presence at community events, including the Canfield Fair, and developed collaborations with community partners.
In addition, she reorganized the Friends of the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County as a single entity rather than operating solely for the benefit of each individual branch.
“You can’t launch a development plan if people don’t know what you’re about and who you are,” Liptak says.
Wealth of Knowledge
Aimee Fifarek, director and CEO of the library system, says Liptak has “a great wealth” of knowledge of the community.
When she joined PLYMC in 2017, Fifarek relied on Liptak as a resource for meeting people in the community, especially philanthropists.
Carole Weimer, president of the library’s board of trustees, affirms Liptak’s value to the system.
“Deb has been one of the greatest ambassadors out in the community,” she says.
Weimer also praises Liptak for growing fundraisers such as Ladies in Little Black Dresses for Literacy and the Literary Society author event, which has brought in bestselling authors such as David Baldacci.
As development director, Liptak has been involved with capital campaigns for several projects, including new branch libraries in Austintown and Canfield, Youngstown’s East, Newport and Michael Kusalaba branches, and the Tri-Lakes Branch in North Jackson. More recently, she worked on raising funds for the renovation and expansion of Main Library near downtown Youngstown.
For a time, people in communities where library branches were being updated wanted to model their branches on the Poland building, which was renovated in 2001. Liptak would urge members of those communities to instead consider what would “truly fit in” to what was there already.
“It needs to blend in. It needs to be part of the whole architecture of the street,” she says. She recalls attorney Nils P. Johnson Jr., whom she worked with to raise more than $1 million for the new Canfield Branch, taking photographs of houses all over the city as part of the planning process.
“If you really look at that library, how it blends into the whole Main Street there, it was the perfect fit,” Liptak says.
Johnson Jr., who also is part of a jazz trio that frequently performs at library events, recalls working with Liptak during the years before construction of the new Canfield branch, which opened in 2016. She told him the nature of libraries was changing with increased digitization of materials and their availability online.
“She wanted to have us re-envision what libraries do and therefore what space you might need,” he says. “You don’t necessarily need book space as much as you did before, although people surely continue to like books.”
Praise for Efforts
Community partners that Liptak cites include Compco Industries, the Bacon family and the Muransky Companies.
Greg Smith, chairman of Compco’s board of directors, says Liptak has been instrumental in developing the relationships that are necessary to advance the library’s mission. His father, the late Clarence Smith, was a member of the library’s board of directors from 1989 to 2014
“She’s built immense relationships throughout the community, and she’s trusted, because what Deb Liptak says, she does,” he remarks. “She has always understood that spending time with people is paramount.”
Liptak credits the generosity of the community when it comes to the library.
“I don’t think there is a nonprofit in this community that we don’t work with,” she says. “The other thing is that businesses want a good library in their community, so we get business support all the time.”
There have been challenging times, she admits. Uncertainties in state funding in 2008 led to a focused effort to educate the public about what was at stake.
During the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, she showed benefactors a video that demonstrated what the library was still doing to serve the public. She also did a teleconference call with the entire Youngstown Foundation board to answer questions about a grant request during the pandemic.
“You just keep on communicating with your donors and making sure you’re getting your message in front of them,” she says. “Sometimes our donors aren’t necessarily the people who use the library, but they truly believe in the mission of the library, so they get behind it. They believe in literacy. They believe in making sure our community is well taken care of.”
Though Liptak is leaving her position at the library, she says she will remain active in the community and predicts there will “probably be another chapter” for her.
Weimer says Liptak and her efforts will be missed.
“Those are big shoes to fill so we will do our best to fill the shoes,” she says, “and find somebody who can continue the good donor relations in the community and build library support throughout the entire county.”
Liptak says the PLYMC system is among the best.
“We have a library system that I think everybody wishes they had,” she says. “A lot of people in the community, and in the library world, wish that they had what we have.”