“Ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.”
Toni Bischof standing next to the new German collection in the Takaka Memeorial Library
Self-confessed “reading addict” Toni Bischof, of East Takaka, had a very good idea and German speakers throughout the Bay and the country should be grateful.
“I have a lot of books,” said Toni. “Some of them, maybe the top 10, I would never want to give away, because I re-read them all most years. But I was looking for something good to do with the ones I have definitely finished with. I approached the Takaka library to see whether they would be interested in receiving a collection of books written in German. The librarian at the time wasn’t very interested, so I waited and asked again.”
Takaka’s librarian Tish Potter was very keen and encouraged Toni to pursue the idea. He rang every German-speaking person he could think of in the Bay, asking them to donate books to the new collection. He received over 200.
Tish approached her bosses to see how the process could be made to happen.
“I thought perhaps we could just make some room on a shelf and put all the German-language books out for people to borrow,” said Tish. “It wasn’t quite that simple because of library policies. As far as fiction is concerned, we were able to accept anything that people offered us, but the non-fiction was different. There is a policy regarding the scope of our collections. We have to have a wide range of subject matter in our non-fiction books and, since there was no-one able to read all the books to ascertain their subject matter, we were unable to add them to the new collection.”
Toni is philosophical about the decision.
“Even though it’s only the fiction books I gathered, the library now has a lot of books in German that it didn’t have before. There’s something nice about reading a book in the language it was written in, instead of in translation. Locals and visitors can enjoy them now.”
Tish explained that once the books had been catalogued they also became available to borrowers throughout the country via the interloan system too.
“We’ve also decided to put a little bit of resourcing into the collection,” she said. “That means we’ll be buying the odd new title to keep the collection fresh.”
And the headline? “A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.”
Neil Wilson
