The Library Looks at Books and Beyond

An interview with JoEllen Moldoff

 — by Margie Doyle —

Lots and lots and lots of books — but wait! Should there be more? where?

Yes, it’s a beautiful building with a proud history, our Orcas Island Public Library. Since it was built in 1992 with local fund-raising, the Library looking over Eastsound — and East Sound — has been shelter and steward for literacy and learning, from books, newspapers and periodicals to videotapes, audible tapes and dvd’s to teleconferencing, internet connection and ebooks.

Someone who has been part of the library’s mission and success is JoEllen Moldoff, who came to Orcas Island after retiring as a school counselor in 2001. For over 12 years, she’s been a magnet, drawing people to the library for poetry workshops and monthly Writers Roundtable meetings.

But it’s not about her, as she says and shows when explaining her love for the library and her support for its expansion project. She has a wide and far-reaching perspective on the value of Orcas Island Public Library to the community.

JoEllen is one of the library’s 45-plus volunteers who works a weekly shift.  “I absolutely love it,” she says, “and I get much more out of it than I gives to it.

“I love working with people and the staff, they’re a very generous group and go out of their way to help people. If you like reading books and contact with people, I recommend volunteering.”

Throughout the year, JoEllen often arranges workshops on poetry, usually on Tuesday afternoons. All are welcome to these popular classes, with a minimal charge for copying costs. Some of the topics in recent years have been “The Practice of Poetry,” “Poets Teaching Poets,” Leap into Spring” “The Pleasures of Poetry.”

“I ’m not an expert on poetry,” she says, although her knowledge of poetry is exceeded only by her quiet enthusiasm for the poetic gift of expression. The over-riding advice given participants is “Permission granted” … to be silly, heavy, incoherent, flowery or uninformed — whatever. “People are very supportive. Although there’s always new people, a core of the same people tend to show up.

“Why not take a chance, take a risk that involves opening up when you write poetry – that’s a gift!”

JoEllen also organizes and facilitate the monthly Writers Roundtable meetings for the second Saturday of most months. There would-be and accomplished writers share thoughts, prompts and writings on such topics as “Old Friend from Far Away,” “Writing Matters,” “Writing Alone, Writing With Others,”  and “Take Your Hands Off the Handlebars.”

Like most library patrons, her interest in the library doesn’t have a sole focus, such as poetry or writing; she values the Library as “a meeting place, a teaching place.

“The library is so responsive to peoples’ interests, from the most arcane subjects to the latest trends. They’re really good about getting books into circulation.

“Like chickens! I’m a city girl; chickens are something you buy from a butcher and that’s it!” But if you want to learn more about chickens, from novel recipes to the care and feeding of chickens, come to the Library.

“The library is such a give and take: all the classes to support literacy are just part of a healthy, lifelong learning community.”

She particularly values its message to Orcas’ children: “to see the young kids coming in; the  precious moments seeing their awakening interest in reading.”

The tiny, less than 10-ft square, Young Adult reading area — encouraging kids to read?

She also notices the adolescents, both those who see the library as a meeting place and those who are “more loners, less social — it’s such a place of acceptance and refuge.”

Yet the Young Adult reading area now is less that 10 square feet — and it has a big post right in the middle of it. And study desks, lining the south windows, can only accommodate 10 people at the most.

When the library was built in 1992, personal and institutional computers were coming into use for research and learning, but the internet was still a few years away.

“Tremendous strides have been made in technology, and an expansion would be beneficial to everyone,” JoEllen says, both book-lovers and techno-users. Expanding and reconfiguring spaces dedicated to computer use would allow library patrons to have computers in a place more conducive to working than in a “runway” amongst the bookshelves, and would make books more accessible.

A rank of computers for internet access — always in demand

That goes for conference areas too. “It would be so wonderful to have a space similar to what we have now, in a quieter atmosphere, away from the lobby and the good and natural comings and goings that happen — that should be encouraged,” JoEllen observes.

“I want the library to expand. It’s almost like a university. People have a lot to offer — book lovers, writers, storytellers, teachers, artists, filmmakers, students — and somehow the library’s been a place they can be appreciated.”

The multi-volume record and photographs of the Orcas Island Public Library can be found at the Front Desk of the Library. Director Phil Heikkinen is happy to show plans, first designed in 2008 and revised this year by local architects David Kau and Susan Stoltz, for additional study rooms, conference rooms, Young Adult areas and computer areas to be built onto the west side of the current library building.

As JoEllen Moldoff has learned, “There are so many possibilities.”