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Librarian checks out

Leading light of North Van literati retires after 44 years
library

Jane Watkins has turned a page.

After more than 40 years promoting literacy and enforcing the whisper rule, North Vancouver City’s chief librarian Jane Watkins is retiring.

“I actually really love every day of my work,” she says, discussing a career that began 44 years ago in Oakville, Ont.

As the daughter of, and the mother to, a librarian, Watkins now represents the middle chapter of a Dewey Decimal dynasty. However, that wasn’t always the case.

Asked about wanting to be a librarian while growing up, Watkins offers a two-word reply.
“I didn’t,” she says with a laugh.

She worked in a library as a young woman but her ambition was to become a child psychologist.

But when her enrolment into the University of Toronto was delayed, Watkins suddenly had time to consider the advice of her boss. If she loved working with children, her boss reasoned, she should encourage them to read and foster their joy of learning as a librarian.

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City of North Vancouver Librarian Jane Watkins. photo supplied

Watkins went to library school and heard impassioned lectures about the role of libraries in a democracy, and the need for free access to information.

“I was so enamoured with the tenets of librarian-ship: access for all and reading readiness and literacy and adult education,” she remarks. “I’ve never turned back.”

Watkins’ first assignment was typing library catalogue cards (ask your parents, kids).

There were acquisitions slips with six multi-coloured carbon copies she dutifully filed and re-filed.

In her Oakville library, she estimates there were 24 librarians in the acquisition department, “and nobody out front. Nobody helping the public find that book,” Watkins recalls. “What’s required these days is a little different than it used to be.”

In his book, The View from the Cheap Seats, author Neil Gaiman writes about the changing roles of libraries in the era of too much information.

“The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle,” he writes.

It’s a quandary Watkins understands well.

“I still think there’s a real need for depth of knowledge,” she says.

Libraries function, in part, as a fact-checking service, authenticating and comprehending the fruits of a Google search, Watkins explains.

Approximately 1,400 readers walk into North Vancouver’s library every day, and about 1,200 walk in through what Watkins calls “the digital door.”

The library has an electronic branch replete with ebooks and electronic databases, one of many changes since Watkins migrated to B.C. at the end of the millennium.

With her son preparing to go to high school and her daughter (who would go on to become a librarian) having recently graduated, Watkins realized she had: “a magic little moment when you can actually make a change in life.”

After a stint in Richmond, Watkins arrived in North Vancouver in 1999, overseeing what she called an undersized and “probably underwhelming” library.

But that changed on Sept. 20, 2008, a day Watkins recalls as the proudest of her career.

Standing in the city plaza as she was pelted by “bone-chilling rain,” Watkins stood shoulder to shoulder with 400 readers “waiting to get into their new library.”
“That’s what it’s all about for me,” Watkins says, thanking the mayor, council and city staff for making it happen.

Watkins is set to be replaced by Deborah Koep, who has worked as a librarian in Vancouver and in West Vancouver, where she served as deputy director.

Asked about any words of wisdom she could provide her successor, Watkins laughs.

“They never really teach you how to run a library,” she says before reflecting further. “Take each day as it comes is probably the best advice that one could’ve given me.”

Watkins’ announcement came shortly after she was presented with the 2016 Award of Excellence from the Association of British Columbia Public Library Directors, a testament to her “strong leadership and her ability to inspire,” stated library board chair Shervin Shahriari in a press release.

While she’s embraced innovation, Watkins’ career has also been governed by the simple precept that a library is more than just a “depository for books.”

“Often, libraries are the best-kept secret around,” Watkins says.