Serendipity

Serendipity - there is a word you don't hear very often anymore. It's a lovely sounding word, and it tends to describe a positive sort of event. I'm not sure why words fall out of use. I'll have to look into that further.

But right now I wanted to share a particularly serendipitous experience we had at the library. As you may know, we have been working on the bathrooms in the Children's Room and in the process, needed to change the toilet drains from a wall mount to a floor mount (I know TMI). That required some significant repiping - and here was our serendipitous moment. In the process of reconfiguration, the plumbers discovered a small leak. Yes there was some less that appealing clean-up work to be done, but I believe this was a serendipitous moment of the first order. The thought of what might have been the result if the leak went on undetected . . .

So in the process of making some much needed upgrades in the bathrooms, we were able to prevent a truly awful, if not offal, disaster!

So that all has slowed down the finishing touches in the bathrooms, but they should be ready by the end of next week. I will be interested to hear what you think of the changes.

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.