I attended an all day meeting in Utica last Wednesday that dealt with the new reality.  I sure wish I knew what to say.  There will be a merger by June 30.  But the State of Illinois is now proposing a delivery system for the whole state.  I wonder what that might look like– hubs in various large cities?  To be anounced.  I keep attending meetings in person  and by webinar and although I am learning with everyone else, there is not much definite yet.

We are all paying attention to the potentially massive storm coming.  Hope everyone has plenty to read and watch.  We’ll be open unless we have to close for our staff’s safety or because the roads are too bad for patrons.

Please remember to put our 80th birthday party on your schedule. Although the library itself was started in 1893, this buildingwas opened in February 1931.  We will have tours and food.  You can see the third floor, the dumbwaiter that is still in use today to move books from one floor to another and the secret staircase.

We have several employees who  have worked here at the library for 15 years or more.  What changes we have seen– from the card catalog to Internet, to e-books, to computer word processing for the public.    The mission remains the same– to level the playing field for every citizen by  providing   access to knowledge to everyone .  I wonder what changes the next 15 years will bring.

Did you know that when you get a library card now, the card comes with a key ring “card” as well?  So you can have  your library card on your keyring and always have it with you.

The grant application is due on February 1 and we are working hard.  The featured title will be The Maltese Falcon.  We have all seen the movie, right?  When you read the book, I sure could hear Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade.

Starting this week, we will be featuring some mini collections in the fiction room.  We will have Oprah Book Club books on a cart and African American fiction writers on a cart.  Check on it tomorrow.

We had our first “webinar” yesterday with the sales folk from Overdrive.  We anticipate getting this to you asap– but it may be as much as 8-10 weeks!  We need to train staff and select our material first.  Depending on the price, we may have downloadable audio books here  as well as our current Net LIbrary and downloadable music and even some video.  All sounds great.

What a dreaded word “updates” has become.   We do love our computers, networks, social media and word  processing but…. we will be down maybe half a day on Monday the 17th and then on two days in February– the 15 and 16th.  The DeKalb Public Library has no control over this because this is a system wide updating of the ciruclation software on Monday and again in February.  So all libraries in the system will be down as well. No Internet either.  We can still check materials out via pencil and paper but that will be about all.

We will be celebrating the library building’s 80th birthday on February 13.  Music, food and of course, books. More details to come.