Yukiko Tosa ended her career this week back where it all began.
Tosa, head librarian at the Britannia branch, worked her last day Friday, retiring after 39 years with Vancouver Public Library. She said she has probably worked at almost half the library branches in the city over the years, but Britannia holds a special place in her heart.
“I always said, if I was going to end my career I would like to end it here.”
Tosa was a student at Britannia secondary school when the social studies teacher, John Minichiello, who she describes as “quite the social activist,” spurred his students into action.
“He was such an innovator,” she said, adding that he encouraged the students to lobby the city for a community centre.
The centre and library were eventually built adjacent to the high school in 1976.
Tosa has also always had a love of the library.
“My first exposure to English was in the library,” she said.
Her family moved to Vancouver from Japan when she was six years old.
“I didn’t know a word of English in Grade 1.”
During her school days she volunteered as a library monitor in elementary school and helped out in the high school library.
After high school, she went on to get a degree in education with an eye on becoming a teacher librarian. For a few years she worked as a substitute and joined Vancouver Public Library in 1978. One of her first jobs was riding around in the Bookmobile — a library on wheels that served residents in outlying areas from 1956 until the end of 1990.
She also worked at the information desk at the old Central branch at Robson and Burrard. Those were the days before computers and the advent of the Internet. The entire inventory of the library was recorded in the card catalogue.
It was a labour-intensive system, Tosa remembers. Each morning cataloguing staff would come down with piles of three-by-five cards to be filed. If someone called to ask about a book, Tosa, or another information desk staffer, would have to find it in the card catalogue, which included a listing of all the branches that had that book.
“It was quite tedious,” she said. “And then the computer came and it was so fabulous.”
From getting computers to floppy disks, CD roms and then the Internet, tablets and e-books, Tosa has seen it all.
Eventually she went to library school, where she focused on children’s literature, and started working as a librarian. She even did her practicum at the Britannia branch.
After stints at a few branches, she was asked to join the children’s department at the Central branch.
Tosa said she loved her years working with children of all ages, and their parents and caregivers, but her favourite age group is the babies.
“It’s so precious,” she said of the song and story time for the library’s littlest patrons, “and that’s what I enjoy.”
With the end of her career looming, Tosa returned to the Britannia branch in 2015.
She says she will miss her days working at the library, seeing all the people and her staff. She won’t miss all the paperwork, she says with a smile.
“I think that because the library is a piece of the community my greatest joy is being a part of that community,” Tosa said.
“It’s the community that matters to me most.”
Note: This story has been corrected since first posted.
