Fond Memories

It was in 1964 that I first visited the Goleta Library as a UCSB student. It was in a little storefront on a corner of the shopping center on South Fairview Avenue. Later that space was used for the Municipal Court. Then the library moved to another larger storefront in the same building.

In 1967 during the final months of library school at UCLA I applied for a librarian position with the Santa Barbara Public Library and asked to work in one of the branches. After training in the Central Library and the branch I was appointed Goleta branch supervisor. It was great fun working in the store front and there was a cheerful, competent staff. Two of our patrons were Sue Grafton and Judge Joseph Lodge. In 1972 ground was broken for a new building at 500 North Fairview, the branch’s present location. The building was completed in January, 1973 and we moved in.

The move was accomplished using a small van. Book carts were loaded from shelves in the old library keeping the books in Dewey order. The van drove to the new location, unloaded and returned to the old site to load new carts that had been prepared by some of the staff there. Meanwhile the staff in the new building shelved the books. It went pretty well although some of the carts tipped in transit (exuberance on the part of young drivers?).

There was a big space to fill with books and the whole year before the move we had been ordering extra books. Those had been placed in storage and were transported to be inter-shelved with the books we had just moved.

Three days after our grand opening I retired. It was a 22 year hiatus which was filled with raising a family. In April, 1995 I returned to work part-time in the library I love. The physical and emotional stresses of such a busy library led me to leave after 2 1/2 years, but I continued part-time library work at the Central Library until 2003 when I retired a second time.

When I was branch supervisor I remember that it was a big month when we had over 20,000 items checked out. In 2006 the highest monthly circulation was 56,606.