This librarian makes sure the Milwaukee County Zoo is well-read

In this library, instead of tomes divided into fiction and nonfiction, books are grouped by husbandry, conservation and animal species. 

Books on mammals are categorized in the 700s, birds are 600s and snakes, of course, are numbered 666.  

The Milwaukee County Zoo Library, like other academic and specialty libraries, uses the Library of Congress system of cataloging books. Public libraries use the Dewey Decimal System, said Mary Kazmierczak, the zoo's part-time librarian for the past dozen years. (Animals and zoology are under the 590s in the Dewey system.) 

Tucked inside a nondescript building at the entrance of the Northwestern Mutual Family Farm, the zoo's library features shelves of books used by zookeepers, veterinarians and researchers plus subscriptions to around 30 monthly and quarterly periodicals.

Kazmierczak is in charge of the zoo's 6,000 books — which include smaller collections at the Animal Health Center, education department and Zoo Pride office — and she keeps tabs on new publications to purchase and alerts zookeepers when a periodical or book that might interest them has arrived. 

Kazmierczak loves her job, even though few people outside of the zoo know about the library.

While attending a recent meeting of the Association of Wisconsin Special Librarians "they were like, 'The zoo has a library?' "

"And this was other specialty librarians. I just sort of looked at them, like, 'Really?' " said Kazmierczak, 55.

The Milwaukee County Zoo's library is open to the public who purchase a zoo admission ticket, although books and periodicals cannot be checked out. Researchers and authors need permission from the zoo to use the library, which is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and noon to 3 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday.

At least once a day, a parent toting small children stops at the library after noticing it on the zoo map, often mistakenly thinking it's similar to a public library with story time for kids. It's not.

But anyone can drop in, if only to read the latest issue of Lemur News, Gorilla Journal or Chelonian Conservation and Biology, for folks really into turtles. 

Kazmierczak grew up in Milwaukee, earned bachelor's and master's degrees in political science and history at Marquette University, and worked in the University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering library while studying for a doctorate. She was teaching political science at Carroll University when she became a Zoo Pride volunteer in 1998.

Then in 2005, shortly after earning a master's degree in library science at UW-Milwaukee, a part-time photo database manager position opened in the Zoological Society of Milwaukee's creative department. And a few months after that, the part-time librarian position became available. 

"I am the poster child for serendipitous job search. I was offered the zoo librarian's job and jumped at it, and here I am, 12 years later," said Kazmierczak, whose reading tastes include historical mysteries and European and British history.

All facilities seeking Association of Zoos & Aquariums accreditation must have a library. For small zoos, it might mean a few shelves of books, while places like the large Bronx and San Diego zoos have well-appointed libraries with full-time librarians.

Milwaukee lands somewhere in the middle.

When Kazmierczak took over, she expanded library operations to include literature research, helping writers working on a specific topic find books and periodicals, and document delivery. She emails veterinarians and zookeepers the tables of contents of books and periodicals in their area of expertise so they can request a copy if they're interested. 

The oldest book in the library is "Brehm's Life of Animals," published in 1895 and donated decades ago, when the zoo was at Washington Park. Some cost several hundred dollars, such as the multi-volume "Handbook of Mammals of the World."

"There are some animal species where there are no books. I think we have the only book on spider monkeys, and the only book on duikers," she said. The Milwaukee zoo recently acquired, for the first time, a yellow-backed duiker. 

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Library funding comes from the zoo train budget, which allows Kazmierczak to buy new books and pay for magazine subscriptions. Among recent purchases: "Bovids of the World," "The Enigma of the Owl" and "America's Snake: The Rise and Fall of the Timber Rattlesnake."

"They're not all page-turners," Kazmierczak admitted.