I drove nearly four hours round-trip today to do a five minute presentation at a tea in honour of a branch assistant who's been with our region for fifteen years…
…which makes me think that rural librarianship has some unique requirements you won't find in any other type of library…
…which makes me think that rural librarianship also has some unique rewards including the joy of homebaked cookies and dainties, a fly on the wall perspective for two hours conversation covering all manner of small town comings and goings plus the inevitable “Saskatchewan One Degree of Separation” moment of finding out that one person attending the tea has a daughter who signed a document for you in her role as a Justice of the Peace in your hometown and the former librarian who is also attending has a son who is married to a friend of yours from University…
…which makes me think that the afternoon tea is the small town female equivalent of the more male dominated “coffee row” which I've also sat in on in a couple different communities while traveling as part of this job…
…which makes me think of how, when we were traveling to a series of meeting in branches near my hometown and after hearing me talk about my experiences growing up in the area, my boss commented “I don't know why you want to work in Regina. You belong in a rural library.”…
…which also makes me think about how many people have said (some variation of) “we'll miss you – you understand rural libraries” as my contract begins coming to a close…
…which makes me think that sentiment is properly better captured as “you understand the rural mindset” (trust me – I've barely begun to get a handle on rural libraries!)…
…which makes me think of the fact that we have a special line in our acquisitions budget to buy copies of one book for every branch in our region (rather than the more usual practice of buying one copy that rotates through the region one branch at a time) and how this year, I bought a book called “Our Towns” which features historical information and background about hundreds of towns across Saskatchewan…
…which makes
me think about how this book was being discussed on talk radio today
and I got the tidbit that “coffee row” is a phrase that originated in Saskatchewan and another tidbit that, at its peak in the late
1800's, my hometown of Indian Head had the most elevators of
any community in Saskatchewan (12), a fact I never knew…
…which makes me think that this book was a pretty good pick for a “branch perm” as we call them whereas the books I picked last year on “The History of Patents”, “The History of Inventions”, “A Child's Guide to the Night Sky” and “A Health Guide for Those Over 50” weren't maybe as good of picks (long story!)…
…which (also) makes me think how those picks led to one of many screw-ups I've had over the past year when I asked that the books be catalogued as “reference” materials when in fact, the proper designation was “branch permanents” which means people could actually, you know, take them out…
…which makes me think that as excited as I am about whatever may come next, I will truly and honestly miss working in a rural library system, with all of its quirks and challenges and small magical moments such as the care taken to design a perfectly arranged tray of goodies…
Comments 6
What's a coffee row?
*Googles it*
…oh. There's a term for that? I had no idea. 🙂 (And somewhat amused that you obviously felt it was common knowledge, no need to define it!)
The funny part is that I almost *did* include a definition but a quick Googling didn't find anything satisfactory but did reveal this term is in use across the country (or at least Guelph) so I thought, maybe it's not as Sask-centric as I thought. (I guess it's actually more of a rural/agricultural based-phrase than a geographically-centered one.)
Yeah, it's clearly spread past Saskatchewan. I don't know that my ignorance of the term necessarily indicates it's not in use in BC – it's probably just that I've spent most of my life in fairly urban places. 🙂 City girl, me (or at least mostly…I did grow up in an area zoned as rural farmland, but it was still inside Greater Vancouver. Definitely no coffee rows to be found!)
If it makes you feel any better, you'll find that having teas for retirees will occur in nearly any library system that you work in, rural or urban. We just had one today for a lady who retired from our branch after 20 years. Fruit plate? Check. Cheese plate? Check. Artfully arranged trays of home-made cookies? Double check.
Although, to be fair, we didn't have the Western-Canada [small-town?] favourite of puffed-wheat squares to which I've only recently been introduced. Nor did we have those yummy squares with the mini-coloured-marshmallows in them, which seem to only ever be made by grandmothers, and which I notice are present in your photo.
And while I'm sure that you do “get” the rural mentality which inevitably helped you to do a good job, I also think that you just kind of get people in general. Which is far more important – regardless of whether you're in Toronto, Regina, or Rugby, North Dakota. (It's the geographic centre of North America … about as close to “the middle of nowhere” as you can get. You get my drift. “Big city / urban / rural”).
I think I'll do a blog post of Saskatchewan and prairie specific terms and jargon one of these days. I did a quick Google search and couldn't find anything like that.
Was your tea staff-only or open to the community? I wasn't very clear but the difference with a small town tea that I was trying to capture – when a small town has a tea, you'll have staff, former staff, board members, patrons and assorted others all show up.
Oh, and out of curiosity, how many showed up at the retirement tea? This one had ten people and I'm always reminded of one branch librarian who was frustrated because her author reading *only* got 5 people out for it.
“Why are you disappointed? You're in a town of 250 people. If Weyburn or Estevan had a proportionate turnout, they'd have to get 200 people! Do you know how many they get for some of their events? Yep, five.”