From being an avid reader to becoming a published writer, Ken Haigh has always a special place in his heart for libraries.
For this week’s edition of People of Collingwood we sat down with Haigh, CEO of the Collingwood Public Library.
Q: What is your background?
A: My family moved around a lot, but my grandparents had a cottage in Wasaga Beach, so I knew the area. When I was young, coming into Collingwood was like coming into The Big Smoke. This was the big city.
Originally, I worked in Thornbury. When I saw the job advertised in Thornbury I thought it was a beautiful part of the world, and I wanted to live there. That was my first library job. I was the CEO at that library for eight years. I took some time off to raise children and then I came here. I’ve been the CEO here now for six years.
Before that, I was a teacher. My first (teaching) job was in Bhutan at a school there, and then I taught in China for a while. Then I taught up in the Arctic, up on Baffin Island in a little town called Clyde River.
When I moved back to Southern Ontario, there were no teaching jobs. I wasn’t really sure what to do, but I didn’t want to be on the supply list forever.
A friend of mine was working in a public library and said I should get my library degree because there were lots of library jobs.
I went back to school, got my Masters of Library Science and walked right into the job in Thornbury.
Q: What made you want to make the jump from Thornbury to Collingwood?
A: I had taken time off to raise my kids. This job just came up and the timing was perfect.
It’s been a great job and I’m very grateful. My youngest twin sons are graduating high school this year, so now they will have all flown away from the nest come September. (laughs)
Q: What does the CEO of the library do?
A: All the boring jobs. I answer to the library board, so I help them with policy, I do the hiring, I write the job descriptions, I prepare the budget which the board then approves. I seem to go to endless meetings and answer enormous numbers of emails everyday.
All the interesting and fun jobs are done by other people. I get to do the work nobody else wants to do. (laughs)
Q: The Collingwood library has a lot of innovative programs that libraries haven’t done in the past. Can you tell me about those?
A: I think the credit for that goes to my staff. I have staff that basically look at the community and look at what this community needs. Then they come to me with ideas. I usually say sure.
The worst that can happen is it fails. We’ll try a program and if nobody participates, we assume that maybe the community didn’t need that.
For example, we have a food program on Mondays. We noticed there were a lot of young people in the library who were either homeless or drifting between homes who didn’t have jobs and were here all day long. They were hungry. So we said, well, why not?
We were sponsored by one of the local churches and we’ve continued that for a number of years now.
We did a survey a couple of years ago and one of the things that came out of the survey was people wanted more programs for seniors. So we’ve really been focusing on that for the past year or so.
Most of these ideas aren’t coming from me. They’re coming from the people who work on the front lines here who see a need.
Q: Collingwood has 45 book clubs, which far exceeds any other library in Simcoe County. Is there a need for that here? Why?
A: We don’t run all 45 ourselves. We run two ourselves. There are a lot of book clubs in this community. The problem with a book club is you all want to read the same book in one month. They all come to us and we’ve been managing that for them through the inter-library loan program, and it’s worked pretty well. It is a bit of work for us but we figure, it’s a need.
The problem is, the inter-library loan service was suspended. All these book clubs are now saying, what do we do now? In the past, it was very efficient, you could get a book within a few days.
I’m hoping we can still help the book clubs. One thing we’re working on now is we’re creating book club kits. People are donating money, we’re purchasing 10 copies of a book, putting them in a bag and the book club can then sign that bag out. We’re hoping to develop maybe 15 of those. We have six so far.
Q: How has the role of libraries changed over the years?
A: I remember going to the library when I was a kid and it was all about books. I got into libraries because I love reading.
That’s only a part of what we do now. It’s still an important part of what we do.
We do a lot more work that, in the past, might have been considered social work. We’re doing a lot more outreach programs, a lot more with technology.
So many of our services are now delivered electronically. I mentioned the seniors programs, but we also do a lot of outreach to schools.
In the past, we thought of the library as a bricks and mortar building and everything happened in the library. What we’re seeing now is we’re moving out into the community. We’re delivering programs, for example, to retirement homes and nursing homes. We’re partnering more with community organizations. For example, we’re planting a community garden on Saturday across the street.
I think libraries have always worked that way, where we don’t have huge budgets, but people like libraries. They get a warm feeling about libraries. They’re willing to help out. They donate their time, money or in-kind. That helps us.
Q: You’re an author too. How many books have you written?
A: Only one that’s been published. (laughs) I’ve written books that are still sitting, gathering dust in drawers.
I wrote a book about the two years I spent teaching in Bhutan. It’s a memoir. It was such a transformative experience I just felt I had to write about it. It kind of bubbled away for 20 years until I finished the manuscript. I sent it to a publisher who said it was great.
There’s a copy on our shelf here. (laughs) It’s called Under the Holy Lake.
Q: How did it feel, being a life-long reader, taking the leap to being an author?
A: Well, I’d always been a writer, ever since high school. I wrote poetry and short stories and stuff. I really wanted to write a book and I felt like I had a book there that wanted to be written. It just took me 20 years to finish.
I finished it while my kids were still toddlers. I wrote in between making formula and changing diapers.
Q: What does the future hold for you? For the library?
A: For me – I hate to say it – but the future for me looks like retirement in a few years.
For the library, I think the biggest challenge the library will face is that Collingwood is growing so fast. Soon, we’re going to outgrow this facility. There are provincial regulations about how much square footage (a library) should have per capita, and we’re hitting that now.
We’re going to need to grow.
For our feature People of Collingwood, we’ll be speaking with interesting people who are either from or are contributing to the Collingwood community in some way. This feature will run on CollingwoodToday every Saturday. If you’d like to nominate or suggest someone to be featured in People of Collingwood, email [email protected].
