A Patron's Handwritten Notes Find a Place on the Richford Library Board
A patron returned a borrowed media card this week with something the Richford Library hadn't seen before: handwritten notes, in both French and English, tucked inside. Staff member Colette Aubin-Roy called them 'a continuation of the conversation the board has been having with itself.'
RICHFORD, Vermont — The media card came back this week with a folded sheet of notepaper tucked alongside it — brief responses to each of the first three episodes of Nous Sommes RONA / We Are RONA, written by hand, in both French and English, by a patron who apparently had things to say but preferred ink to voice.
Colette Aubin-Roy, a staff member at Richford's small branch library, said it was the first time anyone had returned borrowed material with written annotations rather than a spoken comment at the desk or a note left in the suggestion box. With the borrower's permission, she pinned the folded sheet to the community board.
"It felt like it belonged there," she said. "The board has been having a conversation with itself, and this is just — more of that conversation."
The notes themselves, Aubin-Roy said, were modest in length but careful in tone. One passage responded to the second episode in French; the reply to the third was in English. Whether the choice of language tracked something in the episodes, or something in the borrower's own shifting mood, she could not say.
The sheet will stay up as long as the board has room.