Since 2016, upon graduating from the Library and Information Technician program at Durham College, I have worked at five different public library systems, most of which are located in the Durham Region.
This is a brief selection of some of the work that I completed in each position.
At PPL, I was in a front-line customer service role. I spent nearly 90% of my day roving the library, looking to support anyone who might require a little assistance. This was a contract role which I completed after a year. Some additional duties that I had included building displays and maintaining the tourism flyers for the system. You can see in this gallery a few examples of displays that I completed.
Clarington Library, Museums & Archives
Immediately upon completing my contract at PPL, I started working another one-year contract at Clarington as Coordinator of Community Engagement and Branch Manager of the Courtice branch. While I was very successful in this role, there are two stand out events for me – walking in the Santa Claus parade with my children and placing second nationally in the TD Summer Reading Club. For the award, Libraries and Archives Canada flew me to Winnipeg to accept the award on behalf of the library. I actually finished out my contract in Winnipeg and it was bittersweet flying back to Ontario unemployed again.
After Clarington, I went back to school to complete a Bachelor of Arts. However, as money became tight, I worked at Ajax Public Library as a part-time programmer, delivering story time and other programming as the primary function of my role. Although this was a permanent role, I was at the tail end of my undergraduate degree and about to head off for my first graduate degree. Timing of my leaving was hastened by COVID-19 and the library’s early shut down. I’m including here a few photos of program setups that I completed while at Ajax.
RHPL was the first official “librarian” role that I secured after finishing my Master of Information. I was thrilled to have a big “L” job title and couldn’t believe my luck at working with the fantastic team at the Oak Ridges Branch. This was again another contract that I had to terminate early to start a permanent role at Oshawa Public Libraries.
I don’t have many photos from my time at RHPL due to the nature of the work I was completing. I spent most of my time dealing with escalations and building schedules. I do still have my nametag, though!
I was extremely fortunate to secure a management role at OPL in November 2022. I started as the Branch Manager of the Jess Hann Branch, located in the South end of Oshawa. After about a year, I moved to the opposite end of Oshawa to manage the Delpark Branch. I undertook several large projects with the largest being a flooring renovation where we replaced approximately 80% of the flooring in the branch. We were able to close for only 2.5 weeks for the project and get all the materials off the shelves, boxed, flooring swapped, shelves cleaned and moved, materials unboxed, and a full branch shelf read in that time. It was quite a feat and I learned so much about managing a project with many stakeholders.
Behold some memories of my time at OPL:
Sarah McConnell 