50/50 fundraising raffle tickets on sale now
The South Central Regional Library kicked off its 60th anniversary celebrations last week with the launch of a 50/50 it hopes will help it tackle a few special projects across its five branches.
The jackpot draw will take place the morning of Feb. 25, with the winner splitting the pot with the library. An early bird draw for a $250 prize will take place Jan. 20.
“Each branch has their own pet project, so these funds will be the start for those projects,” explains Cathy Ching, SCRL’s director of library services.
The Altona branch is planning to add a much-needed extension for its front desk area, Manitou is looking to update its patron seating area with comfortable couches and chairs, Miami is working with the Miami Railway Station Museum to create a joint green space with walking paths and gardens, Morden wants to renovate its meeting room to make the space more usable for programming and community rentals, and the Winkler branch is going to add a coffee corner for patrons to enjoy.
SCRL Archival Photos
The Winkler library started off in the old MTS building (left) in 1965 before moving to the civic centre (right) in the 1980s and to its current spacious facility across the street in 2006
Tickets start at $5 each and are available online at www.scrl60.com.
The library has no set goal for the 50/50, but every single dollar will help, Ching says, noting they’ll also be using some of the funds to support a big prize raffle they’re planning to run throughout the rest of the year. Tickets for that will go on sale at a gala quiz night being planned for March.
“It will be a formal, semi-formal quiz night,” Ching explains, noting they expect to have space for about 40 teams, though those details are still being hammered out. “It will be at the Access Event Centre in Morden and that’s where we’re going to launch the second raffle.”
Prizes in the works include packages revolving around travel (possibly with a Via Rail voucher), lawn and garden, home improvement, glitz and glamour, and more.
That draw will take place come fall, which is when the library officially turns 60.
Sixty years of community service
SCRL got its start as the Winkler and Morden Regional Library in 1965. Both communities officially celebrated the grand opening of their respective branches in October of that year.
Within just four days of its opening, Morden’s library had 214 members signed up. The small collection size meant patrons were limited to just two books at a time to start.
The branch has called a few locations in downtown Morden home through the years, including the clocktower building that now houses the art gallery. It moved into its current building down the street in 1996, expanding into adjacent space in 2002.
The Winkler library, meanwhile, got its start in an old Manitoba Telephone System building on Mountain Ave. In 1981 it moved into the Winkler Civic Centre, where it remained until the spacious Winkler Centennial Library opened across the street in 2006.
The branch’s books were carried over by a human chain of over 1,000 volunteers. They managed to move 40,000 books in just two days.
These two libraries thrived and grew through the ‘60s and ‘70s, eventually becoming know as the South Central Regional Library when the RM of Stanley joined the funding network in 1976.
In 1988, the Altona library joined the Winkler and Morden branches. The library had previously existed as books in storage in a local resident’s basement starting in the early 1970s, relying totally on volunteers to ensure the community had access to them.
The new SCRL branch started out in the Altona Mall before moving to other spaces in the community through the years. In 2022, they moved back into a much larger area of the mall with their collection of over 30,000 items.
The Miami and Manitou branches are the latest additions to the SCRL network, Miami joining in 2009 and Manitou in 2018, though both had been serving their communities for some time before that.
The Manitou Library first opened in 1990 and has in the years since significantly expanded its collection, hours of operation, and programming.
So too has the Miami Library, which started as a volunteer-run operation in 2001 loaning out books leftover from the former school library it sourced its collection from. Today it shares space with the RM of Thompson civic offices.
These five branches represent seven municipalities across southern Manitoba and together create a stronger library network than any one could on their own.
“Everybody has a different collection, different strengths,” Ching says, noting in example that, “the Manitou branch administrator loves classics and literature, so they have some very obscure stuff in their collection there.”
But wherever a given library material might call home, every patron across the region has access to it. SCRL’s courier is kept busy bringing items from branch to branch for the thousands of inter-library loans requested by patrons annually.
The majority of people living in communities in the SCRL’s service area are library patrons, Ching shares.
“We serve 44,000 people, and 68 per cent of those people have library cards,” she says, pointing out larger library networks in Brandon or the Parkland region have uptake of closer to 20 per cent.
The Morden Library quickly outgrew its first location (left) and has called several buildings downtown home in the years since. Right: The Altona Library joined the SCRL network in 1988 and had space in the Altona Mall. After a few other moves, it is now back in the mall, in a much larger space
A changing library
Ching has been with SCRL since 2004, serving as the Morden branch librarian for a decade before moving into the administrative side of things.
Over the past 20 years, the library has not only grown and changed, but the culture of its various branches very much has as well.
“What I’ve noticed is it was really going towards technology a lot,” she says of the rise of e-readers, “but then that kind of plateaued.”
The digital revolution didn’t kill the demand for the library’s in-house collection at all—2024 saw over 295,000 items borrowed by SCRL patrons, with over 118,000 people walking through the doors of the five branches—and the library has in fact embraced technology, using it to find new ways to engage patrons and get them the materials they want in the mediums they prefer.
In addition to the books and magazines that have long been on offer at local branches, they’ve also added materials such as board games and puzzles, grown existing collections of DVDs and audiobooks, and provided access to digital streaming services for not just books but also newspapers, magazines, comic books, and even movies.
Programming has also exploded in recent years, and it goes well beyond book clubs (though they have those as well). Long gone are the day where libraries are meant to be simply quiet places for reading or studying—now they aim to be true community hubs, Ching says, welcoming everyone for a myriad of clubs, workshops, and other gatherings.
“It’s not just about passive programming and storytime anymore. It’s about bringing people in,” she says. “We have Nerf battles, cookbook clubs, crochet-a-thons …”
The various branches host crafting nights, Lego clubs, workshops on a litany of skills, and community celebrations such as the upcoming Family Literary parties that will close out this month.
SCRL’s staff have been leading the charge on all this varied programming, trying new things to see what works best in each community, Ching says.
“They’re doing what they love … it’s exciting to watch.”
Looking to the future, Ching expects they’ll continue to grow both their materials collection and programming to meet the ever-changing needs of area residents. Increased partnerships with other groups are also very much on the library’s radar.
“We’re finding the more we partner with others in the community, some of our newcomer groups, for example …” the more new ideas are generated, Ching says, pointing out the discussion at a recent cookbook club session turned to the international traditions newcomers enjoyed over the holidays. “It made me think we need to have a ‘flavours of our community’—how do you celebrate Easter or Chanukah or whatever. Stuff we know of but we’re not familiar with.”
They’re also looking at things like a tool-lending library and related how-to workshops, and creating a dedicated youth room at the Winkler branch.
“It feels joyful”
Recent years have come with more than their fair share of challenges—pandemic closures, calls for certain books to be restricted or taken off the shelves—but the SCRL has weathered those storms and come out the stronger for them.
“It feels joyful, is what I’ve found,” Ching says. “We’ve come through that bit of a rough patch, but it really showed us where we belonged in the community, and the community understands that we are here for them.”
