Tuesday was the first day of my three-month term as Writer in Residence at Memorial Park Library in downtown Calgary. There’s always a new crayon brightness to the world on the first day after Labour Day, and when I went to work Tuesday the sky was clear and blue and the fountains in the newly restored park around the library sparkled in the September sunshine.
Memorial Park Library is one of the Carnegie Libraries. It was built in 1912, and it has the graceful lines and fine materials of an earlier time. There’s a marble staircase and mahogany details on the two fireplaces on the main floor. Memorial Park is a place of light and beauty, but it’s also a functioning library cognizant of the people it serves and determined to serve them well.
On Tuesday, Marje Wing, the librarian with whom I will work most closely at Memorial Park, gave me a tour of the building and introduced me to my new colleagues. Yesterday, Sarah Meilleur gave me a tour of Central Library, the main library in the Calgary system and introduced me to her colleagues. Physically, Central is very different from Memorial Park – much larger with much larger holdings and a large and impressive store of the sophisticated technologies that have changed the way in which we now deliver information.
As different as Memorial Park and Central libraries are, I was struck but the single purpose that unites them. Libraries exist to serve their patrons—they identify the needs of those who come through their doors and then they create programs to meet their needs.
This week I heard about ESL programs; programs for seniors wishing to learn computer skills; programs for people who need to acquire new skills to cope with a downturn in the economy; programs that help parents whose first language is not English learn to read Mother Goose with their pre-schoolers; programs for young people at risk, for would be writers, for movie buffs, for lovers of art and theatre. I learned about a Living Books program that matches people who are, for example, about to undergo a double lung transplant with a volunteer who has already been through that procedure.
Carolyn Ryder, the librarian who supervises the Humanities, Community Heritage and Family History Department, spoke passionately about helping people work on family genealogies and novelists who needed to get the details right about life in Calgary at an earlier time. She showed me a slim and somewhat shopworn book that showed the various brands cattleman used to distinguish their herd over the years. People who want to tattoo themselves with their family brands now hotly seek this particular book. Amazing!
Carolyn told me of a newcomer to Calgary who came in that day to ask why with so much in common, Saskatchewan and Alberta had developed such different cultural and political outlooks. Not surprisingly, Carolyn and I came up with some answers by going through the books and magazines and records in the local history collection.
I’m impressed by how sensitive and responsive the libraries are to their patrons’ needs. This determination to serve the community is, of course, not unique to the Calgary system, and it’s something I’ll be rattling on about in the next few blogs. For the time being, I’m happy to use my colleagues as the model that will guide the way in which I function as writer in residence. Like the others who work in these places of light and learning, I’m going to listen, determine what’s needed and do my best to meet that need.