Generations of bookworms have been assisted by Diane Langford in her four decades at Tākaka Memorial Library.
The 58-year-old turned a new page on 1 December and checked out of her workplace for the final time.
Diane says, after reaching seventh form at Golden Bay High School she had no intentions of university study, and she began applying for jobs at a local bank and a dairy company before she was accepted as a library assistant in 1983.
“There’s been lots of really good things that have gone on at the library over the years, the summer reading programme was something that was really good, we started that back in about 1992 or 1993, and that was a programme to keep the kids’ reading over the summertime,” she says.
“They would come in and report once a week or so and get a little reward for coming in and doing their reporting, we did that for 18 or 20 years.”
Diane says the breakfast quiz, which was first published in
2010, had also been a favourite chapter.
“Tens of kids from each of the primary schools got together and we chose three books for them to study up, and then there was a round of general knowledge questions and the winner of that got to take home the book quiz cup for the year,” she says.
“The kids always enjoyed that, and they had lots of fun dressing up as their favourite characters to come into the quiz, the staff dressed up as well for the most part.
“There was a lot of Harry Potter for a good number of years,
and we also had Narnia characters.”
Diane says the end of her library tale was due to unfortunate hips issues which had made standing at the library desk difficult, but she says her new chapter will include working on decades worth of accumulated crafts.
“[I was] almost onto the third generation now, thanks to some of my customers,” she says.
“Thank you to the members who have caught up with me and said thank you, it was always a pleasure dealing with the locals.”
