Who Knew?

One of the many great, unexpected outcomes of our project moving away from the Dewey Decimal System is being able to look at our books in an entirely new way.

My favorite is the "Who Knew" collection. As we went through the collection identifying the right topic for each, we found a number of books that defied categorization. They were all great books and we wanted to be able to highlight them in some way. After many months of discussion and creative thinking, we decided to try "Who Knew". When we evaluated these books, our consistent reaction was just that.

We just purchased a book that will end up in that collection - and it is guaranteed to make you say this. I promise. The book is The Secret Lives of Color, by Kassia St. Clair. This is a really fascinating book that tells how different shades of color got their name. The book is arranged by color, and the entries are quick, clear, and attention grabbing. Who knew that Shocking Pink got it's name from a young woman who had a bit of a reputation for being shocking and she loved this shade? Who knew Fuchsia is named after the plant that was named for a botanist?

So consider browsing through this book. You don't really need to be all that interested in color, the information in the book is just really interesting - and a great bit of trivia for impressing people at work or at a party. You can reserve it here.

But you can say that about all the books in the "Who Knew". Cool books, cool information, books you probably overlooked, but shouldn't. Give it a try - I promise you won't regret it.

Suggestions, recommendations and ideas

I have talked often about changes we are doing around the library, and it is always our intent that these changes will be an improvement. At the same time, we are always happy to hear ideas, suggestions, and recommendations from our users. The customer's point of view is key for seeing the need for improvements, and how better to see things from the customer's POV than to hear directly from you.

In reality some of our greatest improvements have come from complaints from our users. That might seem counter-intuitive, but it still is a fact. Complaints tend to highlight one of our blindspots, and so make us see something in a fresh ways.

So, we are saying that we welcome your input - after it is our goal to make the library what you are looking for, and so need your thoughts to achieve that goal. So drop me a line (abaker@kelleylibrary.org) or stop by for a chat and share your ideas.

A Meandering Path

I was browsing the internet this morning looking for inspiration for this blog. As always, I started with one topic and just by clicking random links that looked interesting, I strayed far from my initial search. It wasn't a waste as I learned something along the way - some valuable, some not so much.

But that reminded be of a similar experience while I was doing some book repairs. It is always interesting to see the varying and far-flung array of titles that end up on my mending shelf. And I peek through them - reading a picture book here, dipping into a non-fiction title, marking down an interesting fiction title to follow up on later. But yesterday it was a large format book on the filming of Star Wars. The repair needed was towards the back, and as I was adding the needed glue, I realized that the photo was of the whole special effects team for the movie. Much to my delight, there was John Van Vliet - a high school classmate and an FX professional. After work, that lead me to catching up with some old HS friends.

This meandering link leading ever further along can be done easily on-line, but just as rewardingly with books. I vividly remember reading a fiction book some years ago that included someone with cancer, and another character researching a disaster in Canada. It lead me to do some research on cancer treatment following up on the challenges living through cancer treatment. But more rewarding was following the disaster in Canada thread. First I did some online research about the Halifax Explosion of 1917 - the largest man-made explosion pre-atomic era. That lead me to a fascinating book - I can't remember the title and looking today I found so many possibilities! (And one that is coming out in November - check for it on our shelves then). But such fascinating information about an event, a location, and results that I had no clue about. And to top it off, I found out why Canada supplied a Christmas tree each year since 1917 to Boston. (Though I believe they just stopped that? - I will have to do a bit of research on that). It was in thanks for all the help Boston sent to Halifax after the disaster.

I came across a quote recently about life being like dominoes - and I have always found reading to be like that. One book leads to another in some way or other, which leads to another, and before you know it you are far from the first point, and all the richer intellectually for it.

Best Laid PLans

There is that famous quote about plans often going awry - and this summer has been daily proof of that for us here at the library.

We are delighted to welcome 3 new employees here at the library - be sure to take a moment to meet them when you stop in. At the same time, we lost a valued employee to retirement, several others moved into new positions at the library - a real shake up. So we planned for all this. We thought. Then came the awry. One of our employees required emergency surgery and is out for months. So we scrambled to create a new plan to handle that. Then others on the staff had some health issues which opened some more holes. We are feeling a bit like that cartoon character trying to plug multiple holes in the dike.

We are now planning for the new operating hours starting September 5th. And we are hoping that these plans may remain secure. If not, we certainly are familiar with thinking on our feet at this point.

But in any challenging situation there is always a positive. In this case, we found that our staff are great folks that are ready to rise to the occasion. We discovered some wonderful qualities in staff members that never had an opportunity to really shine before. We have discovered that we can weather problems (knock on wood).

So my apologies for any erratic service, or more than average errors. Hopefully, as we move forward, our best laid plans will ensure we give you the great library service we work hard to provide.

Breathing Room and Vacations

Now that summer is in full swing, many of our thoughts go to vacations. Trips to some exotic location, or just to the lake. Visits with family, a great time with friends. Away vacation and stay-cations. But what many of them have in common is a great time where you come home needing a vacation to recouperate from all your activities.

We all live in a busy world filled with events, time, and plans going by, sometimes faster than we can deal with. Work, family (Joey's little league, Mason's camp, Hazel's karate lessons, meals, housework, the lawn). The list seems endless. And when do we shoehorn in a little down time, a little space for yourself? It can be really tough, but it is really important to do so that we have the resources to deal with the pace of life.

So we are doing our little bit to help. We are all aware of how fast a couple of weeks go by - and suddenly that book you wanted to read is already overdue. That makes you even more reluctant to take out a couple books, or more, because they are just more things reminding you of what you haven't gotten to. So we have expanded the month (28 day) circulation period that we have been testing in the children's room to include the majority of books, movies, and music in the adult collection.

Yes, new fiction and movies are still 14 days, but once they aren't new anymore - you get to check them out for a month, and they even renew for a month. Pretty sweet, right?

We hope that this small change will help you out in your hectic life, and allow you the luxury of time and a good read.

As Time Goes By

The upcoming retirement of one of our staff has gotten me musing on my own long career. Since Vicki and I are the only ones here that have been in the Library biz for any length of time and in other states, I often talk with her about how we did things back in the dark ages, and we marvel at how things have changed. She is a wonderful person to actually listen to me drone on, but we do have fun shocking the younger staff about what was protocol back in the day.

Just yesterday we were discussing what to do with an older set of encyclopedias. Vicki and I were on the get rid of them, this is old technology, there are better resources available through the library online, etc. side of the discussion. (We are pretty forward looking people in spite of our age, mostly because we have lived through radical changes in the library world and know to get on the bandwagon early on). I reminded Vicki of the fact that when we were new in the field, the expectation, actually rule, was that you had to cite a resource to answer every and all reference/informational questions. What is the capital of the state? We had to pull out a reliable resource and say, "According to the , the state's capital is ___." The world has become a little more trusting - for better or worse - and we allow people to answer from personal knowledge for questions like this.

Everything has changed rapidly and radically over the past 30+ years, and libraries are no different. I don't believe there is a single thing we do now that we did the same way when I first started out. And that's good, it's important that we keep step with the times, to keep our relevance as life rushes along.

But I will miss these talks with Vicki, and I will miss her consummate professionalism and dedication. The library and the community will be the poorer with her departure. But time keeps moving, and we will all benefit from the skills of her replacement. But for now, I want to thank Vicki for all she has done, especially and irreplaceably for me.

Federal Funding for Libraries

The Federal Budget has been in the news a lot recently, but you might have missed one of the possible cuts being proposed. This is funding to the IMLS - Institute of Museums and Library Services. Each year, funds are granted to individual states for library initiatives that will reach every resident. While there are many ways that these funds are distributed within states, New Hampshire chooses to retain the funds at the State Library and use them to provide state-wide services.

You may wonder how that impacts you, and how meaningful this is to you. These services are a bit behind the scenes, but very impactful. These IMLS funds underwrite the state-wide delivery system that moves books around the state to fill requests. Any book that comes to you that isn't part of the GMILCS system, arrives via this delivery. You have access to every book owned in every library in the state. This is particularly valuable for folks who live in very small, underserved communities in NH. Kelley lends a large number of books to a wide spectrum of libraries in the state, sending the items out via this delivery system.

In addition, the EBSCO databases, available to every library in the state, are also underwritten by the IMLS funds. These are a large range of esources with a particular focus on magazine articles. With these esources, you can access virtually any article in almost any magazine, journal, and periodical published in the US. From the comfort of your home. And finally, these funds offset some of the costs of the NH Downloadable Books Consortium. This provides ready access to ebooks and eaudios, accessible from all participating libraries in the state, and accessible from wherever you and your ebook ready device may be.

So if these services are valuable to you, I am sure your federal representatives will be delighted to hear your story. Take a moment to contact them. You will be helping yourself, your family, your neighbors, all of NH and every citizen in the US.

What's Old is New Again

I was reading recently about the phenomenon with young people who 'discover' as new something that for us older folks is past history. My own daughter was mind-blown when we finally got her to understand that the episodes of The Brady Bunch that she avidly watched were some 25 years old. At the same time, as an older person, I am always caught surprised at what younger folks don't recognize or know - just because it seems so clear that everyone should remember stuff like The Who.

But back to the rediscover of popular things, people, and events of the past. I was reading Entertainment Weekly (available to check out at the library, of course) about the reboot of Twin Peaks. We were reminiscing about it here at work, and of course, were dumbstruck when younger workers were totally unaware of it. How was that possible when it was such a huge popular culture event?

And that is the challenge of our work here. We are expected to have a collection of materials of interest and value to the community, but we serve a wide range of ages, interests, backgrounds. What to we buy? What do we keep? How do we decide what might have legs in the future and what is a passing fad (The Osbournes, Paris Hilton and the Simple Life). Space is limited and we have to make these decisions all the time - sometimes we are right and sometimes, well. . .

At least we are on target with Twin Peaks. Whether it is a fond memory or something completely unknown to you, you can try it out with the DVD set here at the library. It can't fail to stir some strong reaction! And you are in luck with the Osbournes, but not so much with Paris.

We will keep doing our best to have what you need now, provide an opportunity to revisit favorites, and with some luck, have that 'new' discovery.

The Challenges of Finding the Right Word

Some of our most interesting discussions have arisen during the NATLAC process here at the library when we try and decide the right term to use. On the surface, we all imagined that translating the Dewey numbers into a natural language term or phrase would be a snap. Were we ever wrong!

There are generally 3 to 4 of us on this project and there are times each of us perceives a different meaning in a single term. Coming to consensus, let alone consensus with the broad array of library users in mind, is definitely a process often fraught with disagreement and high emotion. Just at today's meeting, our still simmering disagreements about seafood and whether that includes fresh-water food fish, over baking and cooking being separate actions rather than baking being a subset of cooking was brought up fresh with passions still as high as ever.

Luckily we respect each other enough and have strong senses of humor as well, that continue to smooth over these disagreements and viewpoints, allow us to make a decision in the best interests of our users, and move on to the next subject to NATLAC. I am unfailing in my admiration for, and respect of the people who have participated in this process and their willingness to set aside personal opinion for the larger perspective of the topic.

That being said, at the moment we are a bit stuck on a good term for the 'characters' both divine and human in the Bible. Let me know if you have any suggestions to throw into the fray. abaker@kelleylibrary.org

Predicting the Future

On the eve of Groundhog's Day, our country's greatest celebration of prognostication, I got to thinking about the art, science, and randomness of predicting the future. I am not sure how often Punxatawney Phil is right, as it seems like he nearly always predicts a winter the full length of winter, but there is that annual stirring of interest about what he will predict.

I find the Phil thing is like folks around me that refer to the Farmer's Almanac predictions of weather for the year. It always seems spot on when you are in the moment and someone says well the Farmer's Almanac did predict a lot of snow this year. But do we ever say the opposite, like being amazed that it is such a snowy winter when the FA predicted little snow.

A team of us have been working for several months to analyze the future of libraries in general, and the Kelley in specifics, and while we have gotten a great handle on a lot of useful things, we are still shying away from making predictions. Just a few years ago, when the digital book craze took off, there were constant predictions of the death of print books, libraries, and reading in general. Several years in, digital books sales are sagging, print is in a resurge, and libraries are still here and busy. Like so many formats before - audiobooks, large print to name a few - we have weathered the panic that these new formats spelled the end of print books as we know it, and they have comfortably settled into being a portion of the array of materials we provide. The key has always been to be careful to offer access to books and film in a variety of ways so we can support the widest range of users. Digital books are just another way for our community to access the wide variety of ideas, interpretations, creativity, wisdom, insights offered by authors and directors from all over the world. Broadening our minds, inspiring us to new ways of thinking, and keeping us open to the changing world.

A New Year

We have entered a new year, after saying goodbye to a year that many people are only too ready to forget. It is a time when we all look back at accomplishments and what happened over the past year, and it isn't any different here at the library as we put together annual reports.

As much as I know it is important to remember and evaluate the past in order to plan for the future better, I am one to be more interested in the future unknown than spending too much time in the past. There is a quote by Heraclitus on my office wall that reads: "You could not step twice into the same river". It is a favorite of mine for a number of reasons, but most importantly to remind me the importance of the moment, and to remember nothing ever stays the same.

As always, we have lots of plans for making the library even more welcoming. We are most excited about being able to reopen some evening hours that we lost with a budget cut some years ago. If the 2017 budget passes, we will be open 5 nights a week until 8:30 - for people who are commuters, are involved in clubs and activities on our late nights, and to offer more evening hours for the meeting rooms.

But it is the surprises that are what I look forward to each year. It is easy to plan, it is more fun to roll with events.