At a warehouse tucked away in an industrial corner of Queens, books of all shapes, sizes and colors fly across a series of conveyor belts, tumbling into shipping containers destined for 150 library branches across New York City.
It’s a symphony of bar codes and Dewey decimals, taking place under the watchful eye of an unlikely conductor: Salvatore Magaddino, 65, a onetime Police Department captain and now the maestro of the logistics department of this unique production, known as BookOps.
BookOps is a collaboration between the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library systems, an operation that sorts and sends books from branch to branch. The process includes organizing and cataloging the systems’ books so that when a customer requests a book that isn’t on the shelves at their location, Mr. Magaddino’s team can have it there, usually by the next day.
For almost two decades, it has been under the watchful eye of Mr. Magaddino. But on Friday, he is retiring.
“I started with the Police Department as soon as I turned 21, and I haven’t missed a paycheck in all that time,” he said. “Look, I care about what we do. It’s not a job. It’s a way of life and something we built.”
Twenty years ago, Mr. Magaddino was looking for a change. Over his career with the Police Department, he had responded to many crime scenes, and it was becoming “gloom and doom all the time,” he said.
A former police buddy who oversaw security for the New York Public Library mentioned that the library system might need some help with distribution. Mr. Magaddino began by doing a little security work for his friend, but was enticed by the logistics operation.
“I wanted to like humanity again; I wanted to see New Yorkers in a different way,” Mr. Magaddino said. “I needed to feel good about life and what I did again. And this was a perfect opportunity for me.”
Mr. Magaddino began his library career in 2006 and took over the logistics not long after, when the system was “in total disarray,” he said. The sorting operations were housed at an old annex in Times Square with a crumbling loading dock, where about 20,000 books sat in a daily backlog. The library had to keep buying new books because the originals could not be found.
He helped find a new location in an abandoned warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, that had ample parking for the 10 trucks that ferry books around the city. It would become the headquarters of updated systems, complete with upgraded sorting machines.
In 2013, after the financial crisis of 2008 threatened some of those modernization plans, the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library decided to combine their logistics systems, with Mr. Magaddino helping to oversee the transition. According to the Urban Libraries Council, BookOps is designed to save the two library systems over $3 million each year.
BookOps now services four boroughs and is probably the largest such operation in the world, Mr. Magaddino said. Tens of thousands of books are sorted each day.
“Our team selects all the books, processes all the books, pays for all the books and distributes all the books,” Mr. Magaddino said. “What I do day to day is that I make sure all of the people who want books have the opportunity to get them.”
And while the work can be stressful, Mr. Magaddino said, he does bring a perspective from his former life as a cop.
“We talk about crises, and, you know, I tone them down because there’s nobody dead in the street,” he said. “So it’s not a crisis for us.”
Javier Velez, 43, the senior manager of sorting and distribution at BookOps, said that Mr. Magaddino’s background lessens the pressure.
“He always comes from like, ‘Hey, let me tell you: Things can always be worse, this is not something that we cannot overcome,’” Mr. Velez said.
Mr. Magaddino said that after missing countless rituals and events as his three children grew up, he wanted to be more present for his grandchildren.
“I’ve been in this game 24/7 since I’m 21 years old — not that I don’t love what I do,” Mr. Magaddino said. “But I’ve got three grandkids that I never had before, and I don’t want to miss any of their birthday parties or school plays or anything like that.”
Mr. Magaddino never expected to work with books.
The new hires he has interviewed all have a similar story for how they found their way into library work, he said: They grew up going to their local library and loved the place.
But Mr. Magaddino said he always had difficulties with reading in school, while he excelled in math and science. When he was in his 30s, his son was diagnosed with dyslexia. Mr. Magaddino realized then that he was dyslexic, too. After decades of avoiding reading, he reconnected with the world of books through his library work.
“It just kind of put me full circle where I am,” he said.
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