Aaron DeVries

Meet one of OLA’s 5,000 members. An interview with random OLA member #27: Aaron DeVries.

I spoke to Aaron DeVries, branch manager at Innisfil Public Library, on the same day he  was dealing with a young boy who had vandalized his branch.

What did you do today?

Today’s been full of lots of crazy fun. There’s been some vandalism to the building, so I spoke to the mother of the 10 year old boy who did it.

What happened?

Without getting into too many details, he removed the cover off one of our fixtures and so when he came by with his mom today we just had a little chat and parental rage is pretty good at correcting behavior I think, so we’re gonna go with that form of discipline for now. *laughs*

Has vandalism at your library happened before?

It’s happened in the past with graffiti and stuff but it’s not a huge issue. Kids get bored. But what they don’t realize is that librarians have a knack for finding information so we can hunt them down!

What else has been going on?

We’ve been doing some planning for an upcoming maker festival. It’ll be happening in October.  We’ve been working alongside the folks who planned the Toronto Maker Festival in August.

Do you personally like to play around with maker technology?

I do some. My own personal interest sway towards audio recording and music production.

Are you a musician?

I would call myself a hobby musician. I enjoy the production side of it. So if friends are making music I like to put together their recordings. It’s more for the fun of it really.

What kind of equipment do you need to do that?

You don’t need much. Any computer these days, especially Macs, come with Garage Band, which is an audio recording software and then you just need a microphone and headphones. There’s a lot of stuff you can do without having any musical knowledge at all. There are very low barriers to accessing that kind of creativity.

What are your summers like at the library?

Well we’re a cottage community. We’re the first pond north of Toronto so we get a lot of summer residents here. It’s unpredictable and chaotic. July is always our busiest month.

Were you able to get away yourself this summer?

Absolutely. I took the family camping all over the place. I’ve got two little ones so my wife and I took them to Grundy Lake most recently.

Do your kids like camping?

They absolutely love it. Now that my 2 year old has a balance bike he is rip snorting up the roads. Well, maybe that’s not the right term. He’s very slowly waddling up and down, but it keeps him busy.

My friend recently went camping and she’s 5 months pregnant and she brought an air mattress. Do you do the air mattress thing or do you sleep on the ground?

Well, my wife was 8 months pregnant when we were in Grundy.

Oh, congratulations!

Yes, so in three weeks we’ll have a third. We have a tent trailer, which is not that comfortable but she hasn’t been too comfortable at home anyway!

That’s very cool that these pregnant women are going camping!

It’s very cool!

Okay, time for a random question… What’s the last book you read?

The Martian by Andy Weir. I liked it.

Are you looking forward to the movie adaptation?

I’m not a huge movie buff, but maybe we’ll make the trip for this. The movie is never as good, but I guess if you know you’re going to be disappointed anyway you may as well be disappointed on the big screen rather than waiting for the DVD.

Last question: What’s the last YouTube video you watched?

I watched Michael Gabriel’s Strings Attached promo video. He’s a musician who will be coming to the library to perform. He’s doing a tour around Ontario and is giving us a little promo concert.

That was a really good answer because it even tied back to the library!

And it wasn’t even an embarrassing video!

Adele Georgievski is a Teaching and Learning Technologies Librarian at Seneca College. The Random Library Generator column interviews OLA members; the current interviewee was selected by the previous interviewee.