Magpie Adventures

Transcript for Eps. 02: Exploring The Strathcona Library

Lisa:
Hello friends! Welcome to Magpie Adventures, where we explore how we feel in the spaces we share. I’m Lisa Pruden. Thanks for being here in this space, where a past version of me speaks to a future holding the present version of you. I wonder what we’re doing?

The theme of this season is togetherness and gathering. I’m curious about how we here in Edmonton come together during the cold winter months. I have found 3 great examples - 3 episodes - each with a different vibe.

This is episode 2, and it is about coming together to explore. We are heading over to Edmonton Public Library’s Strathcona location.

This branch is located by Dr. Wilbert McIntyre Park, just a block south of Whyte Avenue on 104th street. It is Edmonton’s first library, constructed in 1913. And, it is one of the oldest libraries in Alberta.

Friends, the staff at this location are so warm and friendly - all of them. The person you are hearing greeting everyone is named Jesse. She and other librarians are saying hello and making time for anyone who needs help, including each other. I am delighted to introduce you to our tour guide: Community Librarian, Emiliya Picard.

Emiliya:
Hello. My name is Emiliya. I am a community librarian here at the Strathcona library with Edmonton Public Library.

Lisa:
Emiliya is starting us out in the basement.

Emiliya:
I thought it would be a good place to start. So we'll start at the puzzle table here. This is one of my favorite spots, and there's a lot of really big windows around here. We change out the puzzle all the time. This is a really great way to start community building. Whenever I'm on the floor, I'll try to stop by and ask customers about the puzzle that they're working on and how they go about building the puzzle. It's a really great way to kind of start a conversation with folks.

Lisa:
The basement has a lot of natural light. The room feels bright and inviting, with lots of nooks complete with comfortable chairs and charging spaces. You can really make yourself at home here. The puzzle table is placed in an open area where people can easily walk around it. On the table is a puzzle of a beautiful winter scene that looks nearly complete.

Emiliya:
Yeah, and it's really great because it's the community puzzle. It's not a one person puzzle, so, you know, it's people passing by and stopping to make a puzzle, put a piece in, look at the pieces, or there's people chatting missing pieces sometimes, yeah, yeah. And there's folks always sitting around here chatting. It's just like a really fun atmosphere in general, just to stand here and build puzzles and community together.

Lisa:
Okay, so as Emiliya talks about this space, her eyes are lit up and her smile is so warm. The sense of community is the heart of this library. The staff know the names of regular guests, are always willing to help, and the people visiting are comfortable and chatting with each other. Emiliya has two more basement spots to show us.

Emiliya:
The second place that's my favorite is by the back here. When you walk further into this space, there's a lot of books in the area, so a lot of exploring to be had of different stories. We try to encourage folks to look through the stacks more so to find some books that they're interested in. So if they're looking for a book about dinosaurs. We don't just find them a book in our catalog. We take them to the dinosaurs section, and we explore all the possibilities. It's a lot more fun to hold a book in your hand, I think. And amongst the books, of course, we have some study spaces. A lot of students like to stay here and study in the mornings, high school students, university students, our community members come here for meetings and zoom calls and interviews. It's a little bit of a quieter floor, so it allows for that sort of facilitation of space.

And the third and final spot in the basement that I really love is the staff desk, the customer service desk. This is where we answer questions, we facilitate conversation. We chat with our customers. We see how their day is going. We find ways to help them. We find them resources, that sort of thing. So, yeah, really love the customer service desk. This is where the journeys usually begin.

Lisa:
I think “journey” is exactly the right word here. This building is all about discovering. It feels like there’s something new waiting around the corn er or across a threshold. Or, on the next floor!

Emiliya:
Yeah, let's go to the main floor. I really love the main floor. There's a lot of colour up there.

[Sound of walking upstairs. Another staff member says hello as we pass by.]

Emiliya:
So now we're on our first floor. We it's the main floor of the library, and we just walked up the stairs. However, there's also an elevator for accessibility. We have two elevators, one to take you to the basement, and there's one by the front doors that takes you outside. So, yeah, the branch is really accessible for folks. Okay, and then near the elevator is our washrooms. They're universal washrooms. So again, there's a lot of accessibility here. They're an open washroom plan. So, you know, it's a lot of light coming through. It's a cozy bathroom.

Lisa:
It also has the very big, beautiful windows, and I'm seeing some detailing on the tile on the top that has footprints.

Emiliya:
Oh yes, those are cute, and they're leading, actually from our children's area. If you can see, they're going to come across and go into our children's area. It's a little bit of a continuation of that. There's also a lot of wood. We're surrounded by wood and brick, and it's a really old building, so, like, there's a lot of character in the space.

So the children's area is really fun. It's probably one of my favorite spaces of all. Originally, I was library assistant at the Children's branch downtown. I really enjoyed that. I loved playing with kids. I loved doing robots with them. And this space kind of talks about all that. There's a lot of STEM activities in the space. There's a lot of things to fiddle with. We have a giant train toy for kids to climb into and make adventures with. There's a colouring table nearby. It's advertising one of our robots that you could take on the floor. They're surrounded by little books and little chairs. And there's a little fish tank with little fishies floating around everything. And I'm saying little a lot, because, you know, there's little chairs, it's little, tiny things, and it's very, very cute. And then this big train, contraption and, yeah, it's just very magical.

Lisa:
Absolutely. So the stacks are low and reachable. The aquarium also sits low. And yeah, and the chairs, they're just, they're so they like, they're cozy.

Emiliya
They're little, literally, little arm chairs. So for a little person to just sit down and enjoy their time at the Children's Library, and the shelves have toys in them, not just books, which is really fun, because you know, if you're browsing for books, you must also want toys as a kid.

Further down, there's foam blocks a giant rug to play in more little chairs, more book cases that are kind of lower on the size, so that folks can, like, reach for the books, and children can reach the books. Some study spaces as well. Because even though it is a children's area of the library. Of course, there's this whole concept of common valencia that we've been talking about with EPL, where, you know, everybody works together in the space, even though it looks like a children's area. We have adults looking for books here. We have adults studying here as well. So, yeah, everyone just works together amongst differences and makes the library space work.

Lisa:
This is one of my favorite things about any library. You have different people here doing different stuff. It is inherently a place of gathering. Even if you arrive by yourself, you won’t be alone. There is always some fellow explorer, or helper, to share the space with.

Emiliya:
okay, and then coming into the first floor again, when you walk in, you see computers. We have our computer stations up here and in the basement. You can access our digital resources on our computers. There's a printer here, so it's very easy to print your materials. Staff are able to help with computer skills and finding other resources online. A lot of adults use it, but families come and use it as well.

And then finally, when you walk in, there's two giant fireplaces on either end of the customer service desk, and they're super cozy. This is probably one of my favorite spots as well. And we can change the fire to be different colors. And so like, right now, there's like a pinky gold hue with the fire. Sometimes we have the regular red and yellow, sometimes we have blue. So yeah, we have a lot of fun choosing the colors in the morning depending on our own moods, and you know what's happening around us, that kind of thing.

Lisa:
Emiliya is spot on, this is one of the coziest places in the building. There are comfortable armchairs by the fire and a good table to place your coffee and books on. It is a great landing spot if you need a moment to get organized, and lovely place to read and rest.

Emiliya:
I always really like to say the library is the last free place to kind of hang out and have no expectations on you. You're not limited to the time you're spending here. You're not limited to the resources you're taking out. I mean, 40 items at a time, but you can come back and keep taking more free resources every single day once you return your books, for example. You're not limited to, you know, you have to pay to use a bathroom, you have to pay to use our services, you have to pay to use a computer. It's all free. Our programming is free. Our outreaches that we do are free. So there's a lot of reasons to come to the space.

The staff is really lovely. I love the people that I'm working with. Everyone's really friendly. They're going above and beyond to try to help you. If they don't know the answer, they're following up. They know customers by name. It's so lovely to see that kind of culture in the space. How welcome people feel when they walk in and their name is called, and, you know, oh my gosh, I'm welcome in the library. It's my name being said. It's really lovely.

The building is beautiful. I had to tell you that I would find out when it was built. It was built in 1913. and then later we expanded the children's area that we saw. But, yeah, we tried to keep the English architecture so you can still see some of the bricks and stuff around the space. So that's a lot of fun for folks that are coming in from out of town, and they kind of want to see an old library. Very cozy in that regard. And, you know, some people think maybe we have ghosts. I cannot confirm or deny, but yeah, there's that allure too, for some folks, right? Like, oh, maybe there's ghosts. Maybe it's haunted. Maybe I'll, I'll sneak a peek of something.

Lisa:
I'm loving these vibes of families and study groups and people -

Emiliya:
And ghosts.

Lisa:
And ghosts. And just community members all coming in to share the space, just, it's just magical. It's wonderful.

Emiliya:
I think so libraries are I grew up in libraries. I volunteered in libraries growing up, and there's always something special about each library I've worked in. This one's really special in general.

Lisa:
How do you hope people feel while they're in this space?

Emiliya:
Oh my gosh, at home. Yeah, like we are some people's home. They, you know, come to the library, and they spend all day here. This is their safe space. People know who they are, they know their interests, they know their quirks, they know what they like and what they don't like, the types of books they want to read. It really feels like a family here, especially with the staff that we have and how much they care. They really facilitate that feeling of home in this space, we try to have comfy arm chairs and cushy spaces to sit in. We have toys for kids to play with. We try to facilitate a space that's transitional for all ages, all cultures, all backgrounds, so that they see themselves in, you know, the books that they're picking up and the toys that they're picking up and the classes that they're taking with us, we really hope that it encompasses everything that everybody wants and everyone feels like they belong.

And I did want to kind of do like this whole like fairy tale thing, because this building itself feels like a fairy tale, like, you know, once upon a time. Have you ever seen that show? Yeah. So it's like British architecture, big doors. It's a historic space. People think there's ghosts. We have historic tours through here all the time. So when you come inside and there's like, the wood and the exposed brick and so many books, yeah, I grew up with fairy tales and magic, so I put on my pretty dresses, and I come to the space, and I feel like I'm I don't know Belle from Beauty and the Beast half the time, yeah, just Yeah. The space itself feels very fairy tale like,

Lisa:
So you need to put in for one of those rolling ladders.

Emiliya:
Absolutely. I would love it. I don't know if it's gonna be safe. I don't know if the safety people would approve -

Lisa:
Super no.

Emiliya:
But I approve.

Lisa:
Emiliya, thank you so much. It was so wonderful to have a tour with you, and what I felt when I was walking through the space with you especially, was this very contagious sense of joy and optimism and just delight in being in this space. So thank you very much for sharing that with me.

Emiliya:
Yeah, I truly love libraries. This is a very special library with a whole special community involved. So I really hope that came through in the interview. Thank you so much for coming.

Lisa:
Thank you to Emilya Picard and the whole team at the Strathcona branch of Edmonton Public Library. It is a very cool space to gather and explore. There is so much to discover. I highly recommend checking out their programming, asking to see the dinosaur books and having adventures on the train. I’ll have a link to their event calendar and program information in the show notes. Be sure to take a look.

This podcast is created by yours truly, here in Amiskwaciwâskahikan (ᐊᒥᐢᑲᐧᒋᐋᐧᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ ). Edmonton, Alberta in Treaty 6 territory.
If you have ideas for vibes and locations, email me at HI MAGPIES AT GMAIL DOT COM. Or find me on Instagram at HI UNDERSCORE MAGPIES.
Thank you for listening and sharing this time together. It means a lot.

Emiliya let me know that after our tour, Edmonton Public Library installed a bubble machine in the children’s area. This is a tube of water with bubbles filtering up, that has buttons where you can change the colour of light. I love this thing, and it sounds delightful. I’ll leave you with the bubbles.

Stay safe, keep trying out there.

[Bubble sound fade out]