By Elizabeth Wastell,
Gazette Staff
This is our second article in our series featuring local librarians. This week we are meeting with Kathy Winter, who has been with the local library for over 15 years.
Winter is 72 and was born in Mitchell, South Dakota. She has a bachelor’s degree in secondary English with a Library Science minor. Winter has two grown children with her husband Mike: Josh and Sam, along with her daughter in-law, Madeleine, and grandchildren Ashton and Adella.
Like all good librarians, she has a deep connection with books.
"I love the amount of information that can be contained between the covers of a book," said Winter. "Growing up, I didn’t have access to many books and living out on the farm we had to entertain ourselves. The few books we had were read and reread and they took me to places that I didn’t have access to. So books became my entertainment and they still are."
Winter definitely has favorite books and favorite authors.
"James Lee Burke, William Kent Krueger, John Hart, Chris Bohjalian, and my all-time favorite, Stephen King," she exclaimed. "One of my favorites is The King’s General by Daphne Du Maurier. That was one of the books we had out at the farm. It’s a wonderful story!"
Winter is a very social librarian and loves to have a chat with anyone who walks in.
"My favorite is getting see and chat with the patrons - young and old! I also love the “order” of the library – a place for everything and putting everything back in its place," she said. "When no one comes into the library, it become excruciatingly boring. I usually have a lot of the daily tasks done and if my 'people time' is 'people-less', it makes for a long day."
Modern day technology is changing the way people read, and she has to keep up with all these changes.
"The most challenging part for me is keeping up with all the procedures and technology – it seems to change all the time and out in the rural libraries, we don’t do some of those procedures very often so it become a challenge to remember how to do them."
One of the questions we asked Winter was what are some of the strangest questions you have had to answer or the weirdest order you had to place for someone?
"Nothing is weird in library requests," she winked. "Seriously, I do kind of feel that way. We are a curious society and when people ask for things, I find it fun to try to find the answer. One question I used to get a lot is 'where is the Treasure Chest and when is it open'."
Outside the work of the library she enjoys indulging herself in several hobbies.
"I love to read, of course," she said, "and I like to 'fix' things- clothes, furniture, jewelry, and I like to sew."
Watch for more librarian features in upcoming issues of the Gazette.
