Driven by the community
South Taranaki is the envy of the country, and it’s all thanks to the community.
For the past decade the region’s district libraries have received endless support from the community in various ways, as they live by the saying: ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’
Pam Jones, the District Children’s & Young Adult Librarian for South Taranaki, said that although the libraries were greatly supported by the council, the community makes the biggest difference.
‘‘Our library budget is adequate, but it doesn’t add all the frills and allowances and all the extras. Our communities provide that,’’ she said.
‘‘That’s what makes our programmes and our events so cool.’’
Jones said she was often asked to speak at national conferences and seminars about how the libraries get the support. Many people tell her they are envious of South Taranaki and when they discovered the amount of support the libraries get, people were ‘gobsmacked’.
‘‘We’ve often said to them we go back a number of years now and we just decided to take the attitude of that saying.’’
‘‘We took that concept and we went out into the community and we asked our community to come on board with us and that’s what they did.’’
The seven district libraries are offered everything from financial, to hands-on, to taxi-driving support from their communities, and are still constantly asked ‘‘how can we help, what can we do?’’
Jones said she could go on forever with stories of support, so just told a few to illustrate her point.
Because the seven libraries are spread around, members of the community offer to drive their touring visitors, while showing them the brilliant sites. ‘‘We are known in New Zealand through authors and illustrators who all speak very highly of coming to South Taranaki because of the way they are received and looked after by our community,’’ she said.
Although the children’s events aren’t the only ones that the libraries hold, they take up a large portion. Most of the art work for this year’s Sail into Summer Reading programme was done by the community, and the finale of the programme was also supported by them.