Double meaning intended. One of the topics I often read about is blindness. Last fall, I saw a book by Stephen Kuusisto, a professor at the University of Iowa. The title grabbed my attention -- Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening. He is a poet, and to me, poetry is like GrapeNuts. I can only partake of it in small batches, and it takes a long time to chew. But, the batches I read were very interesting, and I mulled over each of them for days before reading the next one.
Mr. Kuusisto also writes a blog, and he recently posted a link to an op-ed piece he wrote for the New York Times regarding the new governor of New York. This reads so well, so easily, that I wanted to share it with others. In my humble opinion, it's an excellent but succinct introduction to the world of blindness. Please give it a read and tell me what impresses you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/opinion/14kuusisto.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Monday, March 17, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
These Are Trained Professionals
Much of our time for the first several days in the "new" building was spent putting things on the shelves, looking at the boxes that remained, adjusting the items on the shelves, and then trying to fit the rest of the materials on the shelves. This meant a lot of shifting, accomplished by teams of two to six people, handful by handful, over and over. It's hard to stay focused when confronted by thousands of books, thousands of books, needing to be moved to another place on the shelves, thousands of books, handful by handful. Thousands of books, and more in boxes, needing to be placed on the shelves. It boggles the mind.
It reminded me of a video I saw many years ago. This should have been our professional training video, viewed before we set foot in the door of our new building. It's too bad we couldn't have watched it beforehand, but we came pretty close to the high standards of conduct and efficiency it portrays. Watch and learn...
It reminded me of a video I saw many years ago. This should have been our professional training video, viewed before we set foot in the door of our new building. It's too bad we couldn't have watched it beforehand, but we came pretty close to the high standards of conduct and efficiency it portrays. Watch and learn...
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Modern Marvels -- Library Edition
Much time and energy are now being consumed by the process of moving back into a remodeled and expanded library building. There just isn't enough "juice" left to hold onto more than one coherent thought, so how about we just give up and explore the new building? 
Since my camera phone is stinking slow and has pitiful-little memory, this is the only image I could capture. Just kidding. The decor of the remodel is very contemporary -- we auctioned off the dusty old nooks and crannies on Ebay -- and this is one of the outstanding features of the new look. There are six of these fabric art pieces suspended from the beams of our ceiling, hovering over librarians and patrons alike.
Another feature is the Great Hall, a wonderfully large open area in the center of the building. Here's a view looking north. You can also see a couple of the motherships in this photo.
Impressive, eh? And in the background, the same beautiful windows we've always had, although the fire marshall required the removal of several of our prize fir trees.
It's exhausting and invigorating to move. There is a lot of work still to do, as we've only been in the building three days now. I'm not counting, but I think we are due to open to the public in less than a week... One of the exciting features in our revamped back room is a computerized check-in and sorting system. Several of the libaries already have these, but ours is the first to have windows for the public to be able to (kind of) watch what's happening when they slip their materials into the bookdrop. I haven't tried to take any photos of it yet, because the back room is full of boxes and carts and things we don't know what to do with yet. But there's a terrific video of the Really Huge Automated Materials Handling Process at our system-wide shipping facility. This video is quite interesting, so here it is:
Since my camera phone is stinking slow and has pitiful-little memory, this is the only image I could capture. Just kidding. The decor of the remodel is very contemporary -- we auctioned off the dusty old nooks and crannies on Ebay -- and this is one of the outstanding features of the new look. There are six of these fabric art pieces suspended from the beams of our ceiling, hovering over librarians and patrons alike.Another feature is the Great Hall, a wonderfully large open area in the center of the building. Here's a view looking north. You can also see a couple of the motherships in this photo.
Impressive, eh? And in the background, the same beautiful windows we've always had, although the fire marshall required the removal of several of our prize fir trees.It's exhausting and invigorating to move. There is a lot of work still to do, as we've only been in the building three days now. I'm not counting, but I think we are due to open to the public in less than a week... One of the exciting features in our revamped back room is a computerized check-in and sorting system. Several of the libaries already have these, but ours is the first to have windows for the public to be able to (kind of) watch what's happening when they slip their materials into the bookdrop. I haven't tried to take any photos of it yet, because the back room is full of boxes and carts and things we don't know what to do with yet. But there's a terrific video of the Really Huge Automated Materials Handling Process at our system-wide shipping facility. This video is quite interesting, so here it is:
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