Nice day

One person’s search for a missing disc expanded into a four-person task, and the patron was delighted with our efforts (fruitless though they were). After I had placed a hold on another copy of the item for her so that she could hear the last disc of her mystery audiobook and find out whodunnit, she inquired: “May I make a donation to your library?”

What fun! Naturally, I said ‘Move along lady, nothing to see here.’

It’s rewarding and refreshing to meet the people who really like what we do, and heck, it’s always nice to be appreciated. Kudos to Jan Chciuk-Celt, Kristine Dale and sub Robert Roehr for adding to this patron’s good mood, and to Susan Smallsreed for making sure that somebody was helping her.

Okay, I DIDN’T tell her to move along, but did the useful thing of directing her to the Friends or the Foundation. Turns out that she’s a member of the Friends already! She just wants her donation earmarked for this particular library.

I Spy… Northwest!

Based on a chat with Food Front’s Tom Mattox about doing something in and with the local community, AND an article about a nifty program in Spencerport, New York, the url for which is here… http://librarytrends.wordpress.com/2006/11/25/expanding-our-horizons/#comment-40 …I propose to do a partnership with local businesses in a similar fashion. They can donate some money for what I’m guessing will be the newest ‘I Spy’ book and put donor bookplates in them, and we will go out and have them do a scavenger hunt to find obscure things in the local Northwest Portland neighborhood. When they come back with all twelve facts (or whatever), they get their free book and maybe a prize from one of the businesses, depending on how generous they are. I told Tom about my idea and he was very excited, as this seems to fit right in with his own thoughts about neighborhood events. Since he’s now on the board of the Nob Hill Business Association, he said he’d be glad to start the ball rolling with those folks. Naturally, I need to have some support from within MCL… I presume I’d best pester Rita, Selections, Penny and probably a few other people to make this a reality. I think May would be a good time, or perhaps late summer – it has to be a time when people are happy to be walking around with their families looking for things. Ideas would certainly be appreciated!

NWL Teen Council

I very much enjoyed my time with the Teen Council during Susan’s absence. Lily, Kristen, Nick, Gina and Cara were very welcoming to the new guy, and obligingly played a get-to-know-you game with me. We played ‘I’ve Never…”, where each person starts with ten tokens of some kind (we used tickets), and people take turns saying things like “I’ve never broken a bone”, or “I’ve never been to Texas”, etc. The idea is to say things that you haven’t done but you think the others have, because if you’ve done that thing, you have to toss a ticket into the middle. Last one with a ticket wins the prize du jour, which was in this case a fancy chocolate bar I provided. The teens enjoyed ‘getting’ each other with questions like, “I’ve never shopped at Abercrombie and Fitch”, knowing full well that others of them had. I got some of them with “I’ve never set up a MySpace account”. We actually got our work done, too!

Wii at the Library

So, if I brought in my Wii for a library event, would that be acceptable? Only two at a time could do things, but that’s the case with DDR as well, and some of the games are short like that. Just a thought.