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Aug 21, 2023

A Fargo librarian has been working between the shelves for 57 years. He has no plan to stop.

FARGO — As a teenager, librarian Steve Hubbard shelved over 101,000 books at the library in just 18 months. Now, at age 74, he can’t even begin to guess the total number despite hanging up his

FARGO — As a teenager, librarian Steve Hubbard shelved over 101,000 books at the library in just 18 months.

Now, at age 74, he can’t even begin to guess the total number despite hanging up his shelving hat back in the ‘70s.

Hubbard has worked for the Fargo Public Library for 57 years — full time for 51 of those years — and has no intention of stopping anytime soon.

After speaking with Hubbard, one is left with the sense that he has truly found the perfect profession for himself.

Nowadays, most of his day is spent on the second floor of the downtown library, 102 Third St. N., where he helps patrons track down books or research materials.

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“He’s enthusiastic,” Library Director Tim Dirks told The Forum. “He loves helping people. He just loves what he does. You can’t ask for more in terms of dedication.”

Hubbard is a “tremendous resource” for the library and the community as a whole, Dirks said, noting Hubbard is the go-to person for facts about the history of the library and the city.

As the manager of the North Dakota Collection at the library, Hubbard helps interested researchers track down information, from the obscure to the commonplace.

He’s helped countless people over the years find what they are looking for, Hubbard said, from international diplomats to renowned authors. He even helped out his fair share of Forum reporters back in the day, he laughed.

“Meeting people like that? Just fantastic!” he said.

However, the bulk of the budding researchers Hubbard assists are his Fargo neighbors. He finds a particular kind of joy in helping them find what they are looking for, he said, because it means so much to him to foster their interest in their topic of choice.

“Sometimes, those first steps are so important,” he said. “You just never know what good you might have done.”

Hubbard originally hails from Bismarck. He moved to Fargo when he was 7 years old in 1956.

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After spending most of his life in the city, he is a walking collection of history, casually recalling the impacts of the deadly ‘57 tornado .

His family was out of town when it hit, he said, and were left wondering if they’d even have a home to come back to.

Fortunately, their house, near what was then the edge of town at 26th Avenue North, was spared by the historic storm, but Hubbard remembers picking up shingles from all around their yard. The storm had been “raining shingles” all over the neighborhood, he said.

Despite that wild welcome, growing up in Fargo was lovely, he said. He attended public school and happened upon his first job at the Fargo Public Library at age 16 in 1966.

Little did he know, he’d found an excellent fit. However, he wasn’t always so sure. When he graduated high school, he enrolled at North Dakota State University before trying his hand at law school, all the while working part time at the library.

When he realized he would never be truly happy as a lawyer, Hubbard decided to pursue his passion and began working full time at the library in 1972.

“I was pretty depressed and torn when I decided to quit law school,” Hubbard said. “But you got to go with, well, if you’ve got some choice in life, try to do something you like.”

Over the years, his work has brought him purpose, he said, and gave him the enjoyment of helping others paired with work that can, at times, be quite intellectually stimulating.

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“I’ve been lucky,” Hubbard said. “I found something that I enjoy doing (that) keeps my mind going.”

His work in the library is sedentary, but he fills his personal time with physical activity to embody the “Greek ideal of body and mind.” When he gets off work, he heads to the tennis courts, often biking or jogging there and back.

He estimates he’s spent thousands of hours playing tennis, hundreds playing hockey, backpacked over a dozen trips into the Rockies and covered the metro area in his canoe or on his rollerblades, bike or cross-country skis.

“It's been a wonderful balance,” Hubbard said. He doesn’t play competitively anymore, he said, but simply for the enjoyment of a job well done.

Over the last 57 years, Hubbard has seen his fair share of changes at the library. The size of the city has boomed, he said, bringing the number of people he serves each day to new heights.

His first position at the library was a reading room attendant at the Carnegie Library, a now-demolished building that was located at the corner of Roberts Street and Second Avenue North . He was in charge of monitoring the basement reading room and mending piles and piles of books.

At that time, the library was already considered too small for the growing Fargo community. It was built in 1903 when Fargo had a population of barely 10,000, he said.

In addition, the lack of central air made the building inhospitable during the summer months. One day, he clocked the temperature inside at 100 degrees on the second floor, he said, laughing as he compared those days of dripping sweat to the comfortable, air conditioned library where he now works.

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In 1968, the city made the leap and built another, larger library where the current library sits at 102 Third St. N. The Carnegie Library was demolished in 1970, he sadly recalled, inspiring his lifelong interest in historical preservation.

It was a different world as a reference librarian in the ‘70’s, he said. Without the modern convenience of the internet, a library’s reference materials were exceptionally important resources for the community, and it was Hubbard’s job to help maintain them.

Now, he has access to tens of thousands of reference libraries from around the world, he said, which has ushered in a new era of information.

“There isn’t much that we can’t get,” Hubbard said. The quality and scope of available information dwarfs even the best library from decades past, he said.

In 2007, Hubbard saw yet another library come and go . The city closed down the library to construct a new building in the same spot to meet growing demand. For two years, the librarians were left waiting. Upon their return, they were quite happy to find a bright, spacious new library filled with natural light and bright colors.

The size of Fargo hasn’t been the only change he’s seen in the last half-century, Hubbard said.

He’s seen increased diversity in the library’s clientele as the city grows, he said. Growing up in North Dakota, he didn’t get the opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds, and his time in the library allowed him to meet people from all over the world.

The first co-worker he had from a different state, back in his 20s, was from Chicago. Meeting him was a “revelation,” Hubbard said, because it gave him a glimpse into a life different from the North Dakotans around him and gave him a chance to really get to know someone else’s experiences.

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“There’s some diversity now, and I think it's a good thing. It’s a little less boring, shall we say,” Hubbard laughed.

When asked what the future holds for him, Steve joked “death.”

“I’m kind of serious, because you never know about tomorrow even if you're 20 years old,” Hubbard said. “You really have got to enjoy each day.”

However, he doesn’t think his health will fail anytime soon, as years of athletic activity and good genetics have given him a youthful vibrancy.

“I’m probably going to live into my 90s whether I like it or not,” Hubbard joked, “and I’ll probably work here as long as I am healthy enough to do so because it's just stimulating and I like it.”

In the meantime, however, Hubbard isn’t slowing down. He is eagerly looking forward to hiking in the Badlands and watching the Lashkowitz High Rise implosion planned for this September .

Launching into another memory, Hubbard remembered attempting to hit a tennis ball to the top of the Lashkowitz building when he was in his 30s. He nearly got it there, he laughed, falling just two floors short of the top of the 204-foot structure.

A perpetually fun person, Hubbard brought that same joy to his work for the last half-century. It’s been a wonderful 57 years, he said.

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At the end of the day, his favorite memories are the people he's worked with. He fondly remembers his longtime friend Diane Briggs, a former librarian who also worked at the library for 50 years . She retired in 2018 and is still doing quite well, he said.

He continues to foster fun working relationships with his co-workers. Indeed, Hubbard was joking around with two other librarians at the reference desk when The Forum arrived to speak with him.

Hubbard, a dynamic person who is filled with life and passion for every aspect of life, is eager to share a friendly conversation with everyone who walks into his library.

“I found something I really like doing,” he said, promising to keep at it.

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