Collectivity and Connection: Ride Along with Dunbar Branch Library

Ride along with us! Spend a typically one-of-a-kind Wednesday in the life of Dunbar Branch. Sass, super Mom powers, and a seasoned chicken wing.

"Can I help you? Oh, it's Jai!" is how Dunbar Branch Administrative Specialist Andrea Chafin greets me at 8:30 AM on a brisk Wednesday morning in late March. From her parked car I briefly appear to be a stranger at her door, but that's okay, I happen to be carrying a batch of pepperoni rolls I baked that morning. In expert Mom fashion, she raises me not one, but two boxes of donuts—a dozen regular and a dozen iced Easter minis—and laden with bags, treats, and tea, we barrel through the hallway with me following Andrea's all-powerful, all-knowing lead.

She hits the lights and starts powering up workstations, and I help her break down tables and chairs from the previous day's events in the large meeting room. We're prepping for the arrival of folks from WVSU Extension Services, who are bringing a Digital StarLab (a portable, blow-up, dome planetarium!) as part of today's outer space-themed spring break activities. When that's done, I help Andrea un-bin that morning's delivery (new items from our Technical Services Department and pulled holds from other locations), gather returns from the book drop, and shift materials to carts for processing. Andrea knows her patrons so well that she can speculate who has requested what! Oh, and by the way, all their carts have names. This one is Nick Carter, and that one is Wheelie Nelson. Over there is Shelvis Presley.

At 9:00 AM, Branch Manager Susan Bailey joins us in a whirlwind of that morning's car saga (Oh, Sheila!) with Library Assistant Kathy Fisher and Children’s Specialist Shannon Hughes not far behind. While everyone takes a cart of materials to a computer for processing, the workroom is alive with stories: stories about patrons, stories about working closing shift yesterday, stories about incoming items, stories about the finicky nature of the catalog system. It's also alive with jokes, puns, and breakfast sandwiches. At one point, NOW That’s What I Call Music! 4 gets checked in and suddenly we’re jamming to the Backstreet Boys.

Everyone starts shelving their processed items or moving them to the hold shelves. Susan challenges me to complete the I-SPY activity for adults, which this month happens to be hidden pictures of characters from the Wizard of Oz movie. Let me tell you, it's not as easy as you think! I accept a hint (or three! One of them being, you might need to look underneath the shelves.) Eventually, I get to pick from the adults' prize bin (The Goonies on DVD, anyone?). As if that wasn’t enough, they hand me the children’s I-SPY; why not give that a whirl? Boy, Library Assistant Jackie Turley made that one even harder! While I struggle in the Children’s area to find the pictures of women activists throughout history (and reluctantly accept another few hints), the folks from WVSU Extension arrive and start setting up. While everyone else opens the library at 10:00 AM, I'm still walking back and forth through Juvenile Easy, stumped, distracted by Nancy Drew books.

Today Dunbar Branch is doing a prize drawing for a free STEM kit, and at one point Shannon speculates out loud about how they could highlight the ballot box more prominently. Out of nowhere, Andrea comes up with a low shelf and some scrap cloth and props it up in the perfect spot. Talk about magic! In the meeting room the StarLab is just about ready to accept groups, and their marshmallow constellation craft and straw rocket launcher activity are rarin’ to go. Andrea, Shannon, Susan, and Kathy are rock stars, directing people to the meeting room, answering the telephone, handing over bathroom keys, giving out new cards to patrons, releasing prints, processing payments for those prints, answering questions, looking up patron accounts, checking out items, pulling holds, tracking program attendance, and catching up with regulars. Shannon works to make a genuine connection with everyone who walks through her door. She spends a few minutes photographing the hype in the meeting room and drafting a Facebook post, which she shares with community pages as the likes rack up.

At some point Security Officer Matt Broyles arrives all stealthy like, with a couple cans of Starry and tray of iced pound cake to share. He gets busy scoping the perimeter of the building and starting his rounds, rolling back yesterday's security camera footage and reviewing incident reports. He adds to the all-around good cheer that’s being cultivated, with more and more folks coming in for the StarLab. (The final count? 118 people!) Susan, Shannon, and I are The Fearless among us—or those willing to sit with our fears; we wiggle through the “birthing canal” that is the StarLab doorway and get to “ooh” and “aah” in the dark with the rest of the kids. I'm on sticker duty; I ask everyone on the way out if they'd like to pick a planet sticker. Saturn and Neptune prove popular, and more than one young patron pranks their sibling with Uranus. As a billion things keep happening at once, I experience firsthand what Library Assistant Jared Layman meant when he told me, “I like to call it Funbar.”

At some point in the chaos, lunch is discussed. Matt mentions Ridge View BBQ, just down the road toward State College, and I volunteer to call in the order and pick it up. In between greeting, assisting, and thanking patrons for stopping by, releasing prints, tracking the day’s stats by the hour (the number of people in the building, the number of new cards, the number of questions answered), replying to emails, building community partnerships, and scheduling programs for Summer Library Club, everyone manages to pull up the menu and hand me a slip of paper. I can't get through to Ridge View on the phone, so eventually I make it down there, wait in line, get salty when a third friend cuts line and joins the two people in front of me (it's a happening joint!), and tote everyone's lunch back to the break room safely—except for a rogue, last minute tumble involving a house-seasoned chicken wing. (It was an accident, Matt!) I slam a pulled pork sammy like it's going out of style, and then everyone finally gets to eat.

As the StarLab activities wind down, I wander the science fiction and fantasy sections, peep an N.K. Jemisin title I didn’t know we had a hardcopy of, take a few artsy photos of their skylight and a plush doggie I’ve developed a fondness for, and hang out behind the circulation desk. They talk pranks and shenanigans (you might not want to leave your Goodreads account signed in on that computer, just sayin’). I peep Susan P.'s office space, which is decorated to the max with so much aesthetic, so much cozy, so many colors, so many stories, so many jellybeans. Then it's 4:36 PM and we're heading toward close. I finally notice that Matt, all stealthy like, has already left. The stories and the laughter keep coming, while Susan and Andrea look up the weather forecast and grab ladders to shift the thermostats overnight. Kathy preps the outgoing delivery without anyone even noticing.

The amazing members of Team Dunbar are always in constant communication. Sensitive to each other's needs, they intuitively know when someone needs a break or a moment of levity, a piece of dark chocolate, or help solving a problem or dealing with a patron. They are an interconnected creature. Like a collective consciousness operating through several bodies, their connections hold as they move throughout their domain. Their dynamic calls to mind something cephalopod-like, a shared brain with several limbs, reaching out and helping their patrons and each other with sass, strength, and superpowers. Andrea is already powering down and hitting the lights, and as abruptly as we began, we whirl back out, almost forgetting our leftover lunches. Susan takes the last of my pepperoni rolls and then we're off. (What is it now, Sheila?!) Not a “goodbye” per se, but more of a “goodness, that reminds me” as we lug our backpacks to our cars and feel the warmth of the early evening breeze. The further apart we get, I feel the strain of the distance between us stretching, but also the strength of our connections holding strong.

And that’s what makes Team Funbar larger than life.

Text and photography © Jai Ravine (2024)