Heather Wright/The Independent

Liam and Annika Vanderveen were pretty sure their favourite librarian was coming home with them.

The siblings have been going with their mom, Alicia, to the Shetland Library nearly every Friday morning for story time with Librarian Rachel Bryans. Aug 13, the family came to say goodbye to their favourite librarian and the tiny library which has served the community for decades. 

“They were a little confused that we weren’t going to be seeing her at this library anymore,” Vanderveen says of her children. “They thought she was going to come work at our house.”

Shirley Sinclair also spent many hours at the Shetland Library with her children and grandchildren for story hour, when there were a lot of children still living in the Dawn-Euphemia hamlet. “Story hour could be 12 or 15 kids,” she said.

But times have changed. The once busy branch only circulated about 1,000 books in 2023. Fifty-six people call Shetland their home branch, in the last year, only 17 people borrowed physical items from the library.

This spring, both Lambton County, which operates libraries, and Dawn-Euphemia council, which owns the building, agreed it was time to consolidate library services in Florence.

The Shetland building will close for the last time Aug. 29 but Aug. 13 was a day for residents to say goodbye.

Ann Towell was among the crowd. She not only is a patron, and an author, she worked at the branch for six years. 

Towell says it was nice to see the neighbours each week. “They’d come in and chat. And it was nice to see what books were out there,” she said. But Towell admits as the number of customers declined, a shift could be a bit boring, trying to find things to do until the next customer arrived. 

Towell doesn’t visit the physical library as much anymore, choosing to get most of her books on the Libby app. 

Towell will be happy to use the Florence Library, which has much more space at its location in the community hall in Florence. 

Sinclair says she may even cross the county line to see what services the Chatham-Kent Library offers in Bothwell in the future. “I live in the middle, I can go anywhere.”

Sinclair says she’ll miss the local little library. “It was nice and close. But ever since COVID, every time I came here, there wasn’t anybody else here.”