The Yorkton Public Library exists to serve the community, and new chief librarian Jian Wang is excited that the library is becoming a more diverse place, to better reflect this community.
Wang was born in Shanghai, China, and his undergraduate education happened there. He came to Canada for his masters education, getting two degrees from UBC. He worked in the library system in the lower mainland in BC, before moving to Saskatchewan, working in Regina for ten years before moving to Saskatoon and then coming to Yorkton. He said he was drawn to Yorkton because it would enrich his career, as it would give him experience in a rural library setting.
“Also, with so many years of experience in the public library sector, I would like to contribute back to this profession.”
He has been in Yorkton for less than two months so far, and said he’s been building the library staff, promoting some people from within the library already to new positions, as well as hiring new people for library page positions and casual positions.
“We are building a team who are knowledgeable, who have skills, who have a comparable education.”
The staff of the library is becoming more diverse, with a larger variety of backgrounds represented in the library. Beyond Wang himelf, the library staff includes Radwa Moawad from Egypt and Sheena Brown from Jamaica. Wang is proud to see that the library is international.
The strength of the library is that it’s deeply embedded in the life of the community, and that’s something that Wang sees as their greatest strength. It’s easier to see the changing needs of the community when you have long-time staff who are an integral part of it, and that helps them change to meet those needs.
Wang wants to see the library engage in more partnerships through the community, as well as work with other communities to share knowledge and resources. He points to a current partnership with SIGN, where counselling programs are hosted at the library from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., where there are free walk-in counselling sessions, as an example of the kind of partnerships the library wants to have. They area also working with SaskAbilities to host resume writing workshops, and offering the space to local authors to meet people in the community, to promote writing and literacy.
“Libraries are becoming more and more of a social place, so it’s a place which welcomes everyone to explore, to learn and to get connected with others. That’s the trend with the library, we’re not just a place to borrow books, we have all kinds of programs and services.”
But what does Wang want to change? One of his goals is going to be to make the library more accessible. For example, there is not a lot of technology to assist people with disabilities. He wants to promote the audiobook subscription services the library offers. They are considering getting DAISY players, which are audio-book readers designed to be easy to use for people who are sight-impaired, and other technology that would assist sight-impaired people in the community.
Given Yorkton’s demographics, Wang wants to see seniors become a bigger part of the library. They want to have more programs that seniors can participate in.
“The health of seniors is a concern of our library.”
