Chris Walker is coming -- mark your calendars!

As many of you probably know, CBC personality Chris Walker was interested in doing an Itchy Feet presentation at the library.  Some of you have also probably heard that I nixed the idea.  It's partly true.

On my first day as interim head librarian, I was asked about scheduling an Itchy Feet presentation for him this season.  At that point, I was completely overwhelmed, desperately did not want to take on any extra obligations for myself or the library, and it never occurred to me just how many people would be disappointed (WNMS members, library patrons, other members of the community, and even Chris Walker himself).  So I had a staff member send him our regrets by e-mail.

Later that day, a member of WNMS called me, and very kindly connected the dots for me.  She expressed how disappointed everyone would be if Chris didn't get to make an Itchy Feet presentation, and showed an amazing willingness to help if logistics were a problem.  In response, I had the same staff member e-mail Chris back and re-open the conversation.

Since then, I've heard from many different members of the community, and it's been unanimous.  Everyone wants to see Chris Walker's presentation.  There are people who I'd never expect to see excited who are absolutely thrilled he's coming.  In short, there was no way we could turn him down.  So we've been in touch with Chris, and agreed on a date for his presentation.


Mark your calendars!

"Building Blocks:  Architecture and Religion in the Middle East"

with Chris Walker

Friday, May 7th

WE'RE BACK!

We're back!  The holiday closures gave the library's hard-working staff some much-needed time to spend with family recharging for the year ahead, and now we're back to our normal schedule.

As I said in my last blog post before the holidays, we've all got a lot to look forward to at the library in 2010, and some of those things are already happening.

New Books
The new books we've ordered over the past month or so have started to pour in.  Since Christmas, we've received 139 new books, and there are many more to come.  We've received most of the graphic novels we ordered (including two volumes of Mouse Guard, which Sharon ordered and I'd never heard of but looks really neat), some fantastic fiction (including Michael Crichton's first book published after his death, a compilation of Naomi Novik's first three Temeraire novels, the final novel in the Star Wars Darth Bane trilogy, and Stephen King's newest), and some compelling non-fiction (autobiographies by Theoren Fleury and Howie Mandel among other titles).

New Computers
The library's new public computers were installed between Christmas and New Year's.  They're faster and more reliable than the old ones, and as an added benefit, have headphone jack in the front (no more reaching around to plug headphones into the rear jacks).

Children's Programs
The library's children's programs will resume starting next week (except for Wednesday Club, which will start the week after).  Here's the breakdown:

Lapsit

• Starts January 14th
• Every Thursday at 10:30am
  
• Rhymes and songs for children 0-2 and their parents
• Drop-ins welcome
  

Storytime

• Starts January 15th
• Every Friday at 10:30am
• Stories, songs, and crafts for children 3-5 years old
• Pre-registration is required

Wednesday Club

• Starts January 20th
• Every 2nd Wednesday at 3:00pm
• Stories and crafts for school-age children
• Drop-ins welcome

Itchy Feet
We haven't finalized the schedule yet, but the Itchy Feet season will begin before the end of January.  We've got some great presentations lined up that will take us from Taiwan to Nigeria and many points in-between.


As you can see, there's lots of great stuff happening at the library so far in 2010, and there's much more to come.  Stay tuned!

Plans for the new year

Like everyone else in the world, we're well into planning for 2010 at the Tumbler Ridge Public Library. From the sounds of things, patrons and staff alike are in for a very good beginning to the year.

First, Sharon and I have been ordering books like crazy since we received the go-ahead from the library's accountant late last month. A handful have been delivered (in record time no less), but the majority of them will be arriving in early 2010. These books comprise our choices from *two* quarterly hotlists published by United Library Services (our main book supplier), a dozen smaller brochures from various publishers/distributors, and titles we've stumbled upon over the course of the last few months. While the books from these orders arrive, Sharon and I will be going through our non-fiction section to identify gaps in the library's collection and then ordering books to fill the gaps.

Second, I received a call from IT North (the library's tech support company) yesterday. Our new patron computers are ready to be installed. Regular users of the library probably know that our current patron computers are getting pretty old (the majority of them are still Pentium-IIIs) and that it's definitely time for an upgrade.

Third, the library's seventeeth Itchy Feet season will begin in the new year. We had over a dozen Itchy Feet presentations last year (including a stellar one by yours truly), and they provided an excellent respite from the winter doldrums.

Finally, the library's children's programming will start up again in mid-January. Wednesday Club, Lapsit, and Storytime will return to provide the weekly recommended allotment of library fun for children.

We've got an exciting start to the year ahead, so stop by the library early and often in 2010.
Merry Christmas folks!

--Jacob Fehr

=====Coming Attraction=====

Stay tuned for A Very Special Storytime on January 29th.

Featuring the King of Itchy Feet 2009, the Illustrious Impresario of ILLs, the Overlord of Overdues, the Charismatic Captain Amazing, the library's Head of Technical Services himself:

Jacob Fehr

in his first storytime ever with Sharon in attendance.


The Theme: Hockey (to coincide with the Olympic torch passing through TR that weekend)
The Books: The best hockey books in the library's children's collection PLUS Jacob's favourite children's story
The Craft: a Jacob original craft

9:30am - Daycare Storytime
10:30am - General public Storytime (pre-registration for 2010 storytime sessions is on now)

CBC Radio mentions TRPL

CBC Radio One mentioned our library this morning in reference to Betsy Trumpener's upcoming visit. They even mentioned our website and gave the URL, which was pretty spiffy. In fact, the only downside was that as of this morning, the poster for Mike Nash (tonight's Itchy Feet author visit) was occupying the main page of the library's website, and the Betsy Trumpener stuff was off to the side in the Events bar.

I updated the main page to feature the poster for Betsy Trumpener and Barbara Adler (after all, if CBC is going to give us publicity, we should try to coordinate matters), and removed Mike Nash's poster. I felt a little bad, but later rationalized it. I have the next four days off, so it was a choice between cheating Mike Nash out of a few hours of website advertising and cheating Betsy Trumpener and Barbara Adler out of four days worth.