Q&A with Newly Retired University Place Librarian Cindy Bonaro

(Editor's note: After we reported that longtime , I caught up with her to chat about her career)

Cindy Bonaro

Position: Retired Managing Librarian in University Place

Age: 58

Started with Pierce County Library System: 1975; majority of years were spent with University Place. She also spent time in Lakewood and Steilacoom.

Education: 1979 Master’s Degree in Library Science, University of Washington

Family: Husband of 38 years, Frank; Children Jenny (Vanderwerff), 31, and Adrian, 29; grandchildren Maddox, 1, and Jacob, who turns a month old Tuesday.

Q. What brought on the talk of retirement?

A. One of my big goals during the last few years I was working was finishing the new UP library project. It’s been a year since the . I was able to see it completed, and I’m very proud of that.

Also, the need for more family time. As a grandparent, I want to do that. …  Also, my husband has been retired three years. It was getting more difficult for me to go to work and he wasn’t. It just seemed like a good time.

Q. What are some of the things you will hang your hat on?

A. Some of the services I was instrumental in bringing toward the beginning. One of them was a project I took on to bring to bags of books to home daycare centers. We were delivering to big daycares, but the home daycares needed help too. We had 100 home daycares on our list.

I’m really proud of kind of the transition for UP over all the years I’ve been there. As we moved from the old library, I was very involved with library design and creating a welcoming space for the University Place community.

One thing that was really important to me was the teen space. In our old library, we didn’t really have a teen space. We created a space for them in the meeting room … with the new one, we had our teens involved. They’d tell us what they wanted in that space. We went and toured other libraries that had teen areas that were working for them.

Another thing is technology, the kind that you have to have in the library … One of the things that is exciting for me is because the library is changing all the time, there is flexibility in the design. We are the only in Pierce County Library that is LEED certified.

Q. What do you think your legacy will be?

A. I think the UP library has become integrated into the community because of its involvement in the community. I thought it was important to be part community, to get to know people so we could all get together to improve the community.

For me, it’s bringing the library into all parts of the community. That to me, I think, is maybe a little different than other librarians who haven’t been involved.

Q. Now that you’re retired, will you still work with the University Place Historical Society (which she helped start in 1999)?

A. I’m president, so I want to continue with that. Kind of a big thing with that group is an establishment of a museum. I want a place where people can go and look at their history, look at documents. That’s something I would really like for the community.