April 24, 2008

I thought I would add some pictures of our new family reading area. I wrote about it a while ago, and someone actually posted a comment asking to see pictures. It was fun to know that at least one person is reading this.

One of the projects we've been working on at the library is to introduce all of our staff to web social networking applications. Yesterday I took the 4 hour class that Anita Johansen and Kate Mossman have been offering to staff members over the last several months. For my homework project I decided to start another blog. This one has nothing to do with the library, but it has been entertaining (to me, anyway) to put together. You can check it out at by clicking here.

April 23, 2008

When I first came to Everett almost nine years ago, I remember driving north on Hoyt to get to the library for a job interview--passing the plasma center, a tattoo shop, and a dilapidated strip of shops. The tattoo shop is long gone, the plasma center burned down, and there's an amazing amount of construction either recently completed (the Imagine! Children's Museum), in progress (Library Place and the new Elks building), or in the planning stages (ArtSpace).

It's been interesting to watch the project next door. It looks like something my son would have loved when he was young--lots of dirt and large trucks. I took some photos the other day to post here.

April 11, 2008

When I started this blog, I planned to keep you informed about some of my experiences with technology. So here's a progress report. I have a Flickr account that I opened last summer for my photos. Last week I got an email from someone named Emma at Schmaps asking permission to possibly use one of my photos for an online east coast guide. I almost deleted it, thinking it was spam, but I scrolled down and saw a photo I had taken in the Arnold Arboretum whe we were visiting Boston last August, and subsequently posted on Flickr. I gave my permission for them to use it if it makes it past their selection committee. I was surprised at how pleased I was that they had found my photo, and were even considering using it. Now I want to try adding some photos to this blog--starting with the Arnold Arboretum photo.

March 24, 2008

This morning we had a party to celebrate the upcoming retirement of Dorothy Matsui, Head of Children's and Outreach Services for the past twenty years. We held the party in the new Family Reading Area at the Main Library, which is just the last of Dorothy's many ideas for improving the service we offer to children. It's been a privilege for me to work with Dorothy, and while I'm sad to see her go, I know she's ready to try new things. The Friends of the Library has donated money to purchase children's books in Dorothy's honor, and those books will serve as a wonderful reminder of someone who spent her career thinking of the best ways to help children learn to love books and reading.

The other day Dorothy and I were talking about books we remembered from our childhoods. I remember loving Pippi Longstocking , the Jenny Linsky books, and Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr, among many others. Pippi is newly popular because of her movie fame, but young readers and their parents can still check out books about the little black cat named Jenny and the Swedish brothers whose adventures are so beautifully illustrated by Maj Lindman. I think this is truly one of the joys of a library--not only do we offer the opportunity to find wonderful new books, but we also make it possible to revisit those we loved years ago.

Dorothy leaves us this Friday. She's looking forward to working in her garden, lots of reading, and probably some travel. If you're in the library, stop by to say goodbye.

March 7, 2008

This weekend the Everett Women's Film Festival will be screening independent films by women filmmakers at the Historic Everett Theatre. It's the festival's 11th year. I've been involved with the event for about eight years because I love movies. I've also been responsible for purchasing the DVD collection here at the library, and this has allowed me to include some of the favorite films from past festivals in the Everett Public Library's collection. A few of these films are only available on VHS, others we have in DVD--but they're all worth watching. Here's a partial list of past festival favorites available for checkout from the library:

Chaos
A Hero for Daisy
Regret to Inform
Three Women and a Chateau
The Story of Mothers and Daughters
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Sour Death Balls
The Language You Cry In
In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger
Mad, Hot Ballroom

Happy viewing.

February 28, 2008

On Friday, February 22, the library held our third Evening for Excellence. This year we celebrated the naming of the Main Library reading room in honor of former director, Mark A. Nesse with a talk by Nancy Pearl entitled the Pleasures and Perils of a Life of Reading. Nancy is the former director of the Seattle Center for the Book, and is now an author and NPR commentor. Some of you may remember Nancy from her previous visits to the Everett Public Library. She always recommends good books to read, and I was pleased that we have almost all of the titles she mentioned on Friday night in our collection.

I made a note of the books she talked about, and thought you might like to check out her suggestions. In no particular order they were:

Paperboy by Pete Dexter
Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert by Georgina Howell
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halbertam
In the Woods by Tana French
Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee
The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts by Richard Peck
Feed by M.T. Anderson

and, anything by Patrick O'Brien, Lee Child, and William Laschner. Someone has already checked out The Towers of Trebizond, so I'll have to wait for that one.

January 6, 2008

I had planned to post a very short list of books that I have particularly enjoyed at the end of 2007, but now it's already 2008. The books are still worth reading, so here's my belated list of good reads.

I just finished Ann Patchett's new novel, Run, and it was lovely to read. Patchett's novel takes place over a period of 24 hours in the life of Bernard Doyle and his three sons, two of whom are adopted. An accident brings the family together with Tennessee, a single mother, and her daughter Kenya, changing all their lives profoundly.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka is another novel about families. Nadia and Vera, middle-aged sisters with no great love for each other, try to cope with their aging, widowed father, and his infatuation with Valentina, a gold-digging Ukrainian determined to marry him. Lewycka's writing is both amusing and poignant, and rings especially true if you have an aging parent in your life.