By Gary Lee Stuber
Briana Adkins is a fixture at the Clay County Library on Main Street in Clay. By that I mean she is almost like an extension of the front desk, or one of the comfortable chairs or lounges. She is almost as familiar as furniture. Bree, as most people call her, has been employed at the library for eight and a half years. But she has been there a lot longer than that. From the time she was in eighth grade and discovered there was a library downtown, Bree has been a fixture here. She lived up on Backstreet and the library was just a simple quick walk from her home. In fact, she says pretty much from eighth grade to her graduation at Clay County High School to beyond, she came to the library every day the doors were opened.
“I used to sit back there on the couch, in my comfortable spot and read until my friends’ mom used to come and pick him up and I would walk home.”
“Technically,” She says, “This was my first job straight out of high school. I just saw the job posted in the newspaper and I typed up a resume (of after school work), and came down and applied, and it was, ‘Hello. It’s you.’ And I got the interview and the job.” A job she has become very good at.
But she has a quality very few people have these days: she is polite, helpful and unashamedly optimistic. She can brighten anyone’s day with her smile and charming manner.
“People need help when they come in here, and I try to do what I can. We fax, we make color copies as well as black and white, sometimes they will bring in handwritten copy and I’ll type it up for them. Sometimes people need info on a certain subject and if we don’t have it here I will look it up on the internet and print it out for them. A lot of people need certain tax forms or don’t know what they need. I try to do my best to help them.”
This I know from experience, as I don’t have a printer at home and often come here to print out bank statements or do my taxes on any one of the half-dozen windows OS computers. I have watched her get even the most stubborn computer back up and running. She is multi-talented.
“I do really love this job. It brings me social stability.” She reflects, “I get to help people do all kinds of things.” She insists. “Sometimes just total strangers will walk in and say ‘I didn’t know there was a library here’ and just walk around and look at everything.” She and fellow librarian Samantha Childers are the two employees who take care of the library.
Besides the computer stations and the aisle after aisle of books, there is a large meeting room downstairs available for free to the public for meetings, and a smaller but more intimate area for meetings up on the first floor. They offer more than books for loan. They have a good collection of current audio books, as well as video in DVD and even VHS format.
“We have a few people who will order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble a very popular book in hardcover and since they only read it once, will bring it to us and donate it. Sometimes we have current hardcover books available like that even before we have ordered it.” They do depend on the financial and even material donations by the public at large.
Next time you have gathered up books to send to Goodwill, please consider the Clay County Library first. What they don’t keep for their own shelves, the place on a cart just inside the front doors and give away to any one interested in free books. Parents of young children remember this: the cart with free books is always overflowing with children’s books, and this becomes a good source of new material for bedtime story reading.
“You can always tell,” She laughs, warmly, “when teachers have assigned a report or essay or school project. Suddenly students and parents are down here searching for the same materials.” It is always good to know that someone like Bree or Samantha is always here to help.
Clay County is very fortunate to have one of its own working so hard for the benefit of its citizens. If you don’t already avail yourself of any of the services offered at the Clay County Library, stop in for a visit and you will definitely find something of interest. This library holds a lot of reference material of the history of Clay County as well. Who knows, you might uncover photographs or texts about some of your ancestors here. And black and white photocopies are only a quarter a page. If nothing else, just stop by and wish Bree or Samantha a hearty thank you for doing such a marvelous job with the county’s assets they have been entrusted to keep safe and available.
