One For The Books Jean's Retiring At 95!

For This Devoted Librarian, a New Chapter Begins

- Lynley Ward

She was the part-time classroom help willing to do whatever it took to get her local school a library – and some five decades later, book lover Jean Wilkinson is writing the final chapter in a remarkable story of dedication and literature.

It’s an inspiring feat of service that dates back to the early ‘70s, when the now 95-year-old Palmerston North great-gran first put her hand up to get Russell Street School a library.

“I was already working there as a teacher aide,” recalls Jean. “I just enjoyed books and reading, and there was nobody else at the time who would take it on.”

Time has flown by, but she remembers the modest collection when the first library opened in a classroom in 1977.

“I suppose now you would say it was very difficult, but at the time it didn’t seem to be,” says Jean. “We had so much help from the National Library.”

She remembers a librarian coming to the new school and sifting through different options to house the new library.

“It had to be one of the classrooms because there was nowhere else for it to be. We weren’t prepared for it, really, not having somewhere special for it.”

Because there was no purpose-built library until last year, Jean, who never trained as a librarian, recalls needing to shift rooms around the school as the roll expanded over the past half century.