150

This is the month that Christchurch City Libraries has turned 150 years old. There have been heaps of celebrations around the city's libraries and this week has been the week for staff to celebrate. Last night we had a giant party in the Central library where 300 people gathered to catch up and enjoy lots of reminiscence, food and wine. During the week we had a party for the city where we launched our FREE INTERNET service for the city. The National Librarian Penny Carneby spoke and in her enviable way had many of us tearing up with pride in being part of such a fantastic and important profession. We are a self effacing lot and it was fantastic to take a moment to reflect on all the cool things that we have done over the years. Can't imagine that I will ever be able to do anything else. There is so much still to do. One of the highlights of the festivities as been the 33+ tukutuku panels created by all the teams in the network. We were given some 'training' and understanding of the tukutuku panel as an historical story telling mechanism for Maori and then let loose with all that info and a bunch of modern materials to develop a panel that best illustrates our teams role in the city. They are on show at South library and are just amazing. I worked hard on our one and with such a small team it was a very big effort. I loved it and I know every team found this to be a very bonding exercise. The communities were also involved at libraries as they did weaving and talking with staff as they went.
Here is our one. As you can see it clearly represents our role as the buildings people for the network and there are all kinds of things woven into it that represent the detail and behind the scenes nature of our role. If you want to see more detail go to the link above and you can see all the bits and pieces on every one of them. If you want to see what the traditional tukutuku panels look like then here is a link to some we have in the library.

And finally, log into our Flickr and see a whole heap of photos that have been digitised mapping the people and buildings of our library network. There are some really funny images and some lovely heartwarming ones as well.

Finally, I wanted to say to all the lovely people, staff and customers whom I have met over my time in the library that my life has been hugely enriched by the friendships and interactions I have made and had and that is a gift I have for my whole life. I am very grateful.