From "ssshhh" to "come in and enjoy", Jill Best has seen it all in a library career spanning 40 years.
Her retirement yesterday as Tauranga's libraries manager signified just how much things had changed and yet stayed the same.
She remembered the day at Porirua Library in 1985 when they held a mock funeral for the card catalogue and carried it out with pallbearers for burial.
Her career embraced the first tentative steps into information technology. Now the Tauranga Library creates its own online resources to share with the world, including a file on the Rena disaster which had become an international resource.
But the reassurance of a good paper book remained the constant of her long love affair with libraries.
"People have been predicting the death of libraries since Gutenberg invented the printing press, and it ain't happened yet."
Ms Best said book issues actually went up last year whereas usage of the e-book service went down.
Not that she is nostalgic about print.
"For every comment that technology is bad for literacy, you can put up an equally valid counter argument for its advantages.
Sadly she is keenly aware that this literacy debate was a luxury afforded to First World countries.
For 10 years she has voluntarily organised the collection of books from New Zealand libraries and publishers for distribution to libraries in Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu, Kiribati, and the Solomons.
Ms Best has boxed up nearly 300,000 books to libraries that mostly relied totally on donated books - even in Suva.
It was a passion that now looked like swallowing her retirement. "I can't stop now. In fact it will be easier, I'll have more time."
The last consignment was 400 books to hurricane-ravaged school libraries in Fiji. With typical ingenuity she arranged to have them shipped free aboard a small New Zealand cruise ship.
"It is making a difference to people's lives."
Ms Best, who shifted to Tauranga 16 years ago, said the increasingly large amount of time people spent staring at screens at work and school had translated into a desire to curl up at night with a paper book.
And women were still the biggest consumers of fiction because they were more concerned about relationships, with fiction predominantly about relationships. Men had the biggest appetite for non-fiction.
Females comprised two-thirds of card holders which Ms Best put down to the fact that many also borrowed for the rest of the family.
And age was no barrier to introducing children to books, in fact she even "read to the bump" before her grandchildren were born. "They can hear, they get used to the rhythm of the words."
She winces a little bit at the memory of saying "ssshhh" to people who made too much noise in libraries. Now it was all about saying "come in and enjoy a class or book club or programme for children".
People also use libraries to do their own thing like the knitting club and the kids' Minecraft Club.
"Staff have transitioned from collectors of information to creators of information, from custodians to enablers and teachers."
Ms Best has put up with the library leaking, crazy customers and councils that moved like glaciers. Lonely people still came in for company and warmth.
"We did get a little upset when a traveller unplugged a major part of our network so he could plug in his electric toothbrush."
She said she was proud at how the library had made the transitions but kept its values.
Ms Best leaves the city's libraries in good shape. "To the best of my knowledge, Tauranga libraries still have the highest turnover per book of any public library in the country."