We’re sharing this news from the Carleton Place Public Library:
One of our own is celebrating a huge milestone this week — 25 years working at the Carleton Place Public Library! Isn’t that fantastic? We think so, too.
Judi is one of the first faces you’ll see when you walk into our library, and our patrons have grown to love that over the years. It’s nice to come into a place and have someone say hello, know your name, and ask you how you’re doing. That’s Judi — always connecting with the wonderful people that use our library.
Judi takes care of our paperback books, processing, adding spine labels, and the correct genre stickers, and she makes sure her book racks are always organized. She also works tirelessly on our discarded books, packaging them up to send off to Better World Books, and prepping books to go on our sale table. She’s one of the people who will call you when you have a book or DVD in, or to let you know about a book we’ve tried to get, but can’t. She can often be heard laughing over some little comment shared with one of our patrons, as many of them know her by name, and can’t wait for her to call!
Wednesday mornings just wouldn’t be the same during storytime without Judi. She’s here working away on one of her many daily duties, but she always has a smile and a friendly hello for our young storytime friends who visit each week. She’s been known to save a special book for a child once it is ready for discard, tell them a story about the animals she sees on her morning walk to work, and even participate in crazy hair day or pajama day.
Recently, she took on the role of Health And Safety Officer for our library, and boy, does she do a thorough job! She makes sure all areas of the library — inside and out — are safe for staff and patrons, goes to meetings, writes up reports, and makes sure we keep all of our areas neat and organized. A tidy library is a safe library!
But there is so much more to Judi than just her proficiency on the desk, or her kindness to patrons. Judi is our memory keeper, the holder of library history, our friend, the kindly mom, our garden expert, our local shopper, our fitness aspirations, our resident home cook, our Master mystery and thriller advisor, and our beloved organizer. The library just wouldn’t be the same without her.
Judi, if you read this, please know this… you can never retire. We need you too much. Plus, you’re the only one who knows how to get those great book lists off Fantastic Fiction, or find a library on Google Earth. Just saying.