New London - There was no librarian placing a finger against pursed lips and reminding everyone to be quiet on what Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio called "a day to make some noise" for the Public Library of New London.

Establishing it as a cornerstone of his goal of a "comprehensive, citywide initiative" to improve the education system, Finizio on Thursday announced that he will support a request from the library to almost double its funding.

The additional funding would allow the library to hire a full-time children's librarian, increase its collection of books and periodicals by four times, provide Internet and computer access to more people and be open 68 hours each week - an increase of about 42 percent.

"Education does not start and does not stop in our schools," Finizio said at the library Thursday. "We need youth programs, we need cultural institutions that ... support education as a lifelong endeavor, and no institution in New London does that more than the Public Library of New London."

For the current fiscal year, the library received a budget of $625,000 - a 3.7 percent increase over the previous two years.

The request from the library, which Finizio said he will present to the City Council as part of his annual budget proposal, calls for the library's budget to be increased to $1,247,890.

If the City Council decides to fund the library at its requested level and grant the nearly 100 percent increase, library funding in New London still would be slightly below the state average, according to data compiled by the Connecticut State Library.

One major initiative the library would like to take on with the benefit of a larger budget, Executive Director Suzanne Maryeski said, is to expand its outreach to day care centers and preschools in an attempt to expose young children to more books earlier in life.

"Libraries can transform lives, and we have a vital role to play in the community," she said. "We can make a difference if we can get out there to all the day care centers, wherever there is a group of children, to make sure we're there giving the center books they can use for two weeks, having a good story hour or connecting with parents that way."

Finizio said supporting the public library is particularly important for the city's low-income residents who may not otherwise have access to similar services.

"Early childhood education in particular is essential to helping our children reach their full potential," Finizio said. "By making this investment here in the library, imagine how many hundreds, how many thousands of young people in New London ... how their course in life will fundamentally change because these services are available to them."

Though it is held in trust by a nonprofit association, the library currently receives about 89 percent of its budget from the city's general fund.

The mayor is expected to present his budget proposal to the City Council in April.

c.young@theday.com

Twitter: @ColinAYoung