Words on the Street: Inside the role of a mobile librarian

Librarian Gabriel Davey’s van of changing books has all you could imagine.

There's self-help book The Four Agreements, kids’ graphic novel series Dog Man and the biography of Kiwi writer, Paul Wood How To Escape From Prison (the most popular book in prison).

His stock is tailored according to the 40 stops he makes every month – including to schools, social housing tenants, aged care residents, rehab centres and prisons.

The council-funded mobile library – one of six in Auckland – is a dynamic space, he says.

“Literacy will always be the core of what libraries do. But I think the ways in which people engage with that are always changing,” Davey tells Culture 101.

“We're not sociologists, we're not social workers, but sometimes the best service you can offer someone is to listen. And that's absolutely part of the job.”

At Mount Eden prison, he heads over with a handful of books to read with a small group of men for eight weeks at a time.

Despite the majority having learning or literacy challenges, Davey says it’s the connection they make with people via shared reading in small groups that’s key.

“Something that I think has been highlighted recently, especially in Mount Eden prison, is that we are not very good at giving meaningful social interactions to people that are incarcerated and that can be really negative for their long-term wellbeing and ability to rehabilitate while they're in there.”

Reading is a valuable way for the prisoners to express insight into their life choices, he says. Davey saw that first-hand when lending The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien - a fictionalised account of the author’s experiences as soldier.

“I wasn't really sure what to expect. By an amazing chance in my first session, the group member was a veteran of the Vietnam War. So immediately we had this very powerful connection and discussion about what was in the text and what we were seeing.

“It really meant the world to this guy that he had a way of explaining what he was going through.

“For the other guys, I found that they had a lot of points to relate to on it because war and incarceration, very different things, but in a sort of elemental way, it's an experience of men in a situation that they perhaps didn't choose or have found themselves in. They found a lot to relate to about camaraderie, brotherhood, respect, [and] the expectations of others [in the text].”

It can also help those who have lost touch with their whakapapa to revive an interest in knowing about their past or for lonely folks to find a sense of belonging, he says.

Davey says he tries to remember names and personal details people share to foster community relationships and encourage them to return.

“I think that we have an assumption that people see libraries as an unalloyed sort of social good and for a lot of people, that's the case.

“For others, it may be as simple as they never grew up going to the library or they haven't been for a long time or maybe in the past they got library fines and they got a bit scared off. There's also an element of being part of council and the wider sphere of government, there might be a little bit of mistrust.

“So sometimes you just have to stick with it. You have to have trust in people and show them that you're just another guy.”

And it’s not just books in his van. He’s got games for the children too.

“You need to be quite open hearted. You have to have a high degree of resilience, adaptability, the ability to sort of think on your feet, resourcefulness. 

"I'm making it sound like Boy Scouts," he jokes. "But it is a lot of aspects of that, where you've sort of got to be flexible. You've got to bend and not break and trust in people, trust in the community and trust in your team.”