People love libraries. For library staff it's a great satisfaction and inspiration to hear from customers the many and varied reasons why.
Parklands Library recently enjoyed celebrating its 10th anniversary with a full week of events for customers and staff beginning with a morning tea hosted for our celebrities - valued customers and friends, and founding and current library personnel. Warm welcomes from Sam Ludemann, Dan Daley and Carolyn Robertson, and karakia from Betty Situe began our proceedings. Musicians Dan Callahan and Alan Hawes provided just the right ambience for a gentle time amongst the tea and coffee cups.
Our calendar continued with with our incomparable Zac McCallum taking Hip Hooray Story Time, and an enthusiastically attended 3D printer demonstration, attracting curious customers from 4yrs to 86 yrs of age. Saturday was our Big Day Out with live music performers, Dylan Jonkers, Better than Bacon in the morning and The New Brighton Pirate Ukulele Band in the afternoon. Face painting and entertainment from Tania tale teller extraordinaire, ensured we had a buzzy, happy time with something for everyone.
What was especially heartwarming during this week was the amount of positive feedback staff received from our customer community (that's what birthday celebrations are for after all). Cards and messages flowed in and people took time to tell us, fervently, just how much Parklands Library was a source of help and comfort to them in the very hard post-quake years and currently while rebuild issues continue. Warm, friendly, safe place, stability, information, connections, distraction and relaxation were some of the words we heard. "The library helped me get through."
We're back to a quieter busy-ness now, grinning at a comment we heard along the grape vine from a newcomer to Parklands, on our big day, "Parklands is the best library in the universe!" And we have the lingering scent of celebration lilies.
We still have our usual roster of interesting community events on the go, so feel free to pay us a visit!
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