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Help wanted
Library seeks volunteers, another staff position

Malcolm Gorrill
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Oct 13/00) - The Inuvik Centennial Library is looking for more help.

Staff would welcome more volunteers and are also asking the town for funding for one more staff person, explains Nora Dixon, director of library services.

"We're in the process of submitting budgets -- all departments are -- for the 2001 fiscal year," Dixon said. "We have requested that the calculations be done."

The library currently has one full-time and two part-time employees, as well as two pages -- high school students who shelve books and perform similar tasks. Also, six casual employees work between two to five hours a week.

Dixon said the library is especially busy from 3-6 p.m. each day.

"That's when we have a large number of children who come every day. But we would like to offer a variety of programs for all ages," said Dixon, who gave an example of a new program.

"We've started a program that we've called a NOVEL approach to reading. It's a New Opportunity for Volunteers to Enhance Literacy."

In general, Dixon said, "just anyone who wants to improve literacy skills, we'd really like to be able to buddy them up with a volunteer, or provide some kind of more formal training.

"The second prong of that is the family literacy, where we want to try to provide programming for parents or adults, coupled with their children," she said. "Eventually, we hope we'll be able to have a volunteer walk through the door and link them up with a kid to go and read."

Dixon pointed out such programs take time.

"It takes time to prepare for it, to deliver it and then to do the wind down after, particularly some of the courses or workshops we'd like to do with adults, and with computer literacy."

Dixon said volunteering at the library doesn't necessarily involve a big time commitment. For instance, she said that since this is stamp collecting month, "we're looking for someone who does stamp collecting to come in and talk with the kids about that as a hobby."