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A Word in Your Ear
 
Photo by Kay Mercer

A Word in Your Ear: Three Librarians on the Bay  

Kay Mercer, Events Coordinator, Dunedin Public Libraries —

This issue, we are celebrating 150 years of community-driven library service at Waitati.

The perfect time for a yarn over a cuppa and cake with three generations of Blueskin Bay Librarians: Lorraine Jolly (1974-1984), Ainslie Heather (1984-2002) , and current Librarian (and baker of cakes) Louise Booth.

Ed: How long did you all serve as the Librarian here?

Lorraine: I did ten years in the library from age 34 to 44.

Ainslie: I think I was here for about 17 years. I remember the day my daughter was born, I whizzed down to the library when my contractions started, to make sure the library cards were in alphabetical order before I went off to hospital!

Louise: I’ve been here for 13 years.

Ed: What do you remember about the earlier incarnations of the Waitati Library?

Louise: According to By Blueskin Bay, by R G Pullar, the first library service was started in 1867, but the library building was built in 1903. They didn’t use it until 1905, though, because the Chairman of the Library Committee at that time thought it was a fire risk, so they had to wait until he died before they could move in!

Lorraine: When I was a child, the old library was down Pitt Street, and it was quite a big building.

Ainslie: I remember that. It was a specific library building. There’s a photo of it in Waitati History and Geography written by Julie A Heather.

Lorraine: The Blueskin District Mutual Improvement Society held its first meeting in the school on June the 15th, 1867. The Association were very keen to have a library, and established a library fund. So, the Library was built by community fundraising, and you had to pay to join it. But by the late 1960’s, that old library had close, because the committee was aging, and no-one else seemed interested, and there was just this big pile of leftover old books abandoned in the empty building for years. The only library service in Waitati for a long time was the Country Library Service bus provided by the National Library in Christchurch.

Ainslie: The library building was purchased from the remaining Library Committee by the Waikouaiti County Council, and then it was demolished shortly after.

Lorraine: In the 1960s the National Library bus came around regularly with stocks of books. Marge Ferbert had a cupboard in her house in Doctors Point Road, where she kept the National Library books, and you went to her place to borrow them. Then, when the Waitati community opened the new hall here, it was decided to use the hall office as a library. Marge was moving away, so in September 1973, I wrote and said I would be happy to run the library. And in January 1974 I got a letter from Mr Pearson, the County Council Clerk, appointing me as the librarian, that they would come and put up the shelves, and I could have something like $500 to buy books. The money to get the library started in the hall came from the original Library Committee’s fund that the Council then administered. Miss Overy, who was in charge of the National Library, came down from Christchurch and helped me set the Library up to begin with, and we were originally open on Monday nights, from 6 to 9, and Thursday afternoon, 1 to 4.30. And it was very popular on Monday evenings.

Ed: Did you have school visits, like you do now?

Ainslie: You couldn’t fit them in. They would not have been able to get in that room.

Louise: The back office we have now, that was the library.

Lorraine: And yet we had a lot of books in that little old library, didn’t we, all along one wall.

Ainslie: And the children’s books were behind the door. You could just about fit two or three people in at a time. When I took over, I pushed for a bigger library. That would have been about 1984. We made steady progress and grew the service. I remember my excitement in 1989 when the library got a telephone! Then they extended the hours in the early 1990s because the library was being used more. And we first increased the size of the building in about 1992. We had a grand re-opening. Pete Smith from the Waitati Militia came with the canon, and we fired off a couple of Mills and Boons paperbacks. We’d moved under the control of Dunedin Library in 1989, so the National Library no longer came, but our book budget increased to buy more books. We were the first library in the area to have a computerised catalogue, in about 1992. The Library became busier and you could do more - we could have school groups in. If it wasn’t for having the hall, though, which the community again raised the funds to build, we probably wouldn’t have the library. The hall is used every day. It’s been a great asset.

Ed: Louise, when Ainslie left Blueskin Bay Library, did you take over straight away?

Louise: No, Lorraine Weston-Webb was here for a couple of years, and then she went to Port Chalmers Library. I’ve worked in libraries on and off since I left school, first in Rotorua, and the National Library in Dunedin. I’d worked in a number of roles at Dunedin Public Libraries, before I got the job here in August 2003 – it was the day of my youngest daughter’s 11th birthday! At that stage, we were open Monday and Wednesday afternoons and evenings, and Friday morning and afternoons. I could quickly see that the old library was inadequate, and if we’d kept it we would have had to upgrade it. So, from the word go, I was advocating for a new purpose-built library building. We started a community-driven project to make that happen. The original Library Committee’s land was sold and that money went towards this beautiful new library we have today. 

To celebrate the 150th, we’re going to have a series of events in June, including children’s storyteller and face-painter Rainbow Rosalind. talks and readings, and a community art project. We’re celebrating what our forefathers established here for this community 150 years ago, and continues to thrive to this day.

[Photos from Blueskin Library’s history can be viewed on Scattered Seeds.]