Jordan Wright

Title

Jordan Wright

Description

In this interview, Jordan Wright talks about landing for a conference in Florida. Just to find out it was canceled and his work as his library in Ferndale was put on hold while the Country was on lockdown.

Publisher

Detroit Historical Society

Rights

Detroit Historical Society

Language

en-US

Narrator/Interviewee's Name

Jordan Wright

Interviewer's Name

Kevin Hawthorne

Interview Length

15:57

Transcription

Kevin Hawthorne: Hello, this is Kevin Hawthorne with the Detroit Historical Museum. Here on our oral history on Covid 19. Today, I'm joined with you. Please introduce yourself.

Jordan Wright: My name is Jordan Wright. I'm the director of the Ferndale Area District Library.

Kevin Hawthorne: And may you please spell your name for the record.

Jordan Wright: It's Jordan J o r d a n. And Wright like the brothers W r i g h t.

Kevin Hawthorne: All right. Thank you so much for meeting with us today. And let's start with, how long have you lived in the Fernvale area?

Jordan Wright: I've been close to Ferndale for about. Let's see here. Oh, just 15 years.

Kevin Hawthorne: And where have you lived before then? In the Michigan area?

Jordan Wright: Yep. I grew up in Oscoda, Michigan, for 18 years, and then spent two years in the Saginaw Bay city area before coming down this way.

Kevin Hawthorne: And how long have you worked with the firm built library.

Jordan Wright: 11.5 years.

Kevin Hawthorne: And, what, have you always been at this position, or did you start at a different position when you first came to the library?

Jordan Wright: No, I started as a volunteer in 2013 and clawed my way up to services assistant and then youth librarian, and then head of youth and then assistant director. And then I started in the director role. January.

Kevin Hawthorne: 2024. And so you were at the library during the Covid 19 pandemic? Well. Still ongoing.

Jordan Wright: Correct.

Kevin Hawthorne: What was your the first experience with, when the pandemic first hit in 2020?

Jordan Wright: I had a kind of passing interest, personal interest in epidemiology, which after all of this I no longer have because I'm, you know, I lived it, right. But, so I was watching it, you know, early January and sort of, you know, I started stocking some extra food and stuff and thinking could have been worse. And it was great. Hopefully it wasn't, but I actually. Flown down to a conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on March 10th or 12th of that year. I don't exist somewhere around there. It was. The the week where everything shut down. And by the time I had landed, the conference was canceled. So my wife and I, she came with me. We were we were sort of stuck in Fort Lauderdale with nothing to do and kind of panicking. I remember being on the sixth or seventh floor of the hotel and walking up the stairs every time to avoid, going in an elevator with people. We rented. Electric bikes instead of and that's all we did. We just kind of rode around and sightsee sights, iron and avoid, avoided the spring breakers, and ended up renting a car and driving home and taking a few extra days rather than getting back on a plane with all that was going on. So I was I was in I was a thousand miles away when I got the email that said that, Ferndale Library was closed for an undetermined amount of time.

Kevin Hawthorne: And how did it feel like driving back into the city and just seeing it seems kind of the how was I feeling?

Jordan Wright: It was it was weird. I mean, it was scary at the time. I remember we were getting reports. From China that there was a 10% fatality rate. So, you know, that's the kind of thing I was thinking about was 10% seemed a lot scarier than what the actual number was. But, yeah, it was certainly it was certainly, you know, we were really intentional about about how we ordered our food and wiping tables down and, and just trying to avoid other people. So we stopped in Tennessee and we did some hiking in the Smoky Mountains and were able to avoid people. So we made the best of it. But it was not an experience that I would like to go through again.

Kevin Hawthorne: Yeah. And when you say the Ferndale Library, was closed for the foreseeable future at that time, when did you guys open back up and and a limited capacity.

Jordan Wright: We opened up for curbside only service, which was, I believe. In June or late May of 2020. So we were fully. Virtual. For March, April and most of May. I think by state borders, if I recall correctly. We opened up a virtual, excuse me, for curbside only, which was really well used and did that for about a year and then reopened to the public in June of 2021.

Kevin Hawthorne: When you first started doing curbside in June of 2020, how was the response to that? Were you getting lots of orders, or was it kind of how it would been when you guys had been open, like steady?

Jordan Wright: It was busy and it was a new workflow for us. We had, you know, our managers came in and, particularly Jenny Martin, Ed Burns, who were the director and the head of adult services at the time, came in and kind of built the curbside system and arranged in a way that it made sense to have a limited number of staff in the building pulling hold and processing materials. What was the original question? Excuse me. I'm sorry.

Kevin Hawthorne: Just, how popular was the curbside pick up when you guys first implemented it.

Jordan Wright: Pretty popular. So I wish I had numbers to give you, but, I mean, it was pretty nonstop.

Kevin Hawthorne: And then when you guys reopened to the public in 2021, what did did you immediately have the same amount of numbers that you would had pre-pandemic? And I'm sure you if you don't have like exact numbers, that's okay. But I just not like, does it feel like the library was just as full as it had been before Covid, or did it take a while for it to get back up to normal? Numbers of people outside?

Jordan Wright: Took a while, particularly with programing, and we were conservative in terms of re offering programing. So we continued to do virtual things because there seemed to be a demand for it here. You know, not all communities were the same in this. You know, we were hearing things from from commuters out in the outer suburbs that opened right away when they could with Covid, and there was no restrictions, no mask mandates. We tried to Our community was a little on the more conservative side. Not politically conservative, but conservative in terms of safety with with Covid. And they. I would say overwhelmingly preferred at least a virtual option for for a while. And then we kind of slowly ramped things back up with outside programs when we could, and then probably took a full year to get back to, to normal.

Kevin Hawthorne: And different. The library is known for having many wonderful community events. What was the first really big one post? You know, coming back that made you feel like you guys were back to doing, like, the stuff you had done before Covid?

Jordan Wright: That's a really good question. I would say we probably had a. A strong summer reading off in 2022. We host those programs outside, but they were always we'd have, you know, 2 or 300 people through in a couple hours. So it's probably that.

Kevin Hawthorne: Right. And is there any other things that you noticed, that that that are different about how the library operates in a, post-Covid world, for lack of a better word?

Jordan Wright: Well, we have big. Plastic or plexiglass, permanent barriers and all over service desks that. You know, some of our staff, like some of them don't. It is kind of nice. It does present. You know, we're seeing in libraries around the country post Covid, for whatever reason, we're seeing more incidents of violence or abuse or harassment toward library staff, not specifically here in any way. Just, it's just a general trend. The library we're all seeing. So I think our staff takes comfort in a little bit of a barrier. But, you know, with with that, there's the image kind of the optics of a barrier, and then there's kind of a communication barrier as well. I often will just walk around the barrier to talk to somebody. We have to talk about something important. Other things in terms of the way the library operated. We started doing a kind of limited delivery service for patrons who, you know, weren't comfortable even doing the curbside or weren't able to get out during the time. So we continued that, which is really appreciated for some of our senior citizens specifically. We, you know. We. We reinvested because we were spending. During those years when somebody resigned from the library, we didn't replace them because we weren't operating at full capacity. So some of the money we saved there, we reinvested into our digital, online, online resources, databases, ebooks, audiobooks, that sort of thing. Those have continued to grow in popularity. I think partly because people were forced to try them out for the first time and figured out that they liked them. UPS. Those are popular and every year making up a bigger chunk of our budget. Yeah.

Kevin Hawthorne: So definitely with something you noticing e-books, and, certain things like that becoming popular, did you notice was there, like, a certain book for certain? Like, you know, I know you guys also have movies, video games, board games, the whole gambit. Did you notice, like, anything that was particularly popular, like a certain book or certain genre or like, like, I'm assuming people probably weren't looking at books about pandemics during this. They're probably looking for something else. Just general trends. Have you noticed? Obviously we don't have solid numbers.

Jordan Wright: Yeah. Not really.

Kevin Hawthorne: You think people are just looking for just any kind of kind of escape from the current thing that was happening?

Jordan Wright: I think so.

Kevin Hawthorne: Yeah. Like I asked a friend who, for this project who worked at a record store, like what was like the most popular thing people are getting. He's like, well, it was the Taylor Swift record. Like, we saw so many of those during Covid. That was like our biggest, like send out to mail to people from our store.

Jordan Wright: Interesting. Yeah. The book scene changes between what's hot and what's not changing so quickly. No. Just kind of normal consumption.

Kevin Hawthorne: All right. And then. Obviously this has been called like a once in a lifetime thing, but there is like a worry. Do you have a fear of something like this happening again within our lifetimes?

Jordan Wright: I personally view it as inevitable. I mean, maybe maybe not. I mean, certainly within my children's lifetimes. Right? You know, we're about 100 years from the last. The last real, real ugly one. You know, I think we were lucky that this one. I know this is not to minimize. The amount of people who who died through this or or who are still dealing with, the effects of Covid infection. But I think we were lucky that this one was a. Not particularly deadly one or and I think it was I think it was good for us as a society to have a test run. So we know what to do if it's a real bad one. Like, you know, people didn't want to stay inside. And looking back, I'm not sure I actually. Well, walk that back. People didn't want to under stay inside. People didn't want to stay inside. And I get it. I understand. But if this was something like smallpox where you had boils all over your face. I think we now know what to do. Right. We had a trial run and the other end of the other side of the coin. I also feel like if it's another viral infection that has a higher death rate, I think a lot of people may take it less seriously because they survived the one previously. I don't know. You know, if it's if it's really bad, I think. I think we've, we've we've no what to do if it's equally bad or slightly worse. I think that people will maybe not take it seriously enough anymore because. You know, there was so much unknown through through the, the pandemic that there were excesses, right? As we were trying to figure out how to how to navigate this thing. And. We'll figure that out. That all makes sense.

Kevin Hawthorne: No. Absolutely. Yeah. And then just in your general view, how did you view the state response and national response to Covid?

Jordan Wright: I thought the the state response was. Most mostly adequate, you know, with, reports of a 10% death rate. I think the appropriate thing to do was to shut things down. Right? As we learned, more things got opened up. I'm speaking. The next thing I'm about to say, I'm speaking personally, and hopefully I was represent at the library, but, I. Still hold a grudge against the state for allowing bars to open before we mandate schools be reopened. I can tell you that I've seen. Personally seen the impact of the learning loss that to me is just felt wrong to to have bars and restaurants open while while our kids were, you know, not learning in a, in a setting that made a whole lot of sense, truthfully. You know, the national response. You know, I don't know. It's it's it's really easy to look back and criticize the national response or any response with the hindsight that we have, but. You know the. I'm sure. I'm sure the cash payments and the, the a lot of the things we, we did in, in the Covid money they sent to the state and down to the counties and all that, you know, I'm sure that all did a lot of good, and it was probably hard decisions to make in the moment. But, you know, the inflation has been terrible for the last few years. And I'm sure that's not an insignificant part of it. So I mean, leadership is hard, especially when people are panicking. I guess I don't really begrudge anybody for the decisions they made because. It was unprecedented. And nobody. We certainly weren't prepared for it. But I hope we do better next time. Right.

Kevin Hawthorne: All right. And before we end, is there anything in this realm of Covid that we haven't spoken on that you would like to voice now?

Jordan Wright: Oh, I don't think so. I will say that. We offer free Covid test. The library. And those are provided to the state of Michigan. And now we get in kind of interesting perspective because we can tell when there's a surge packages because they just start flying off the shelves. So, we can't keep them stocked right now. So there's obviously a bug going around. But yeah, you know, it's still affecting how we do things. We're still providing masks. And 95 and the more traditional cloth masks for our staff still providing cloth masks for the patrons. We still have hand sanitizer everywhere. Yeah, I don't really like living like this, but it's the reality of it, right?

Kevin Hawthorne: No, I absolutely agree and thank you so much for meeting with me today.

Jordan Wright: Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. It's my pleasure. I'll get that interview interview release form to you, right now.

Kevin Hawthorne: All right. Thank you so much.

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Citation

“Jordan Wright,” Detroit Historical Society Oral History Archive, accessed November 6, 2024, https://oralhistory.detroithistorical.org/items/show/1061.

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