This fall, my library is offering a series of community events to support the Take Charge Challenge, which is a friendly year-long competition between Lawrence and Manhattan for a $100,000 energy efficiency grant! I’m super excited to announce the line-up of events at the Lawrence Public Library very soon, which will include hands-on workshops, art exhibits, and public lectures.

So how the heck does Lawrence win this thing?  We’re competing with Manhattan, KS, in 3 main areas: 1) Home Energy Audits, 2) Switching to Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFLs), and 3) Community Participation in a Westar Class or Take Charge Challenge event. We’ve been trailing in Community Participation… but that will all change this fall!

One thing you can do right now is to click this link and log any light bulbs you’ve switched from incandescent to CFLs this year. (FYI, Cottin’s Hardware at 1832 Mass. is offering 10% discounts on CFLs for the Take Charge Challenge.) For every 5 CFLs you switch out, you’ll pocket $75 in annual energy savings. You can also help just by spreading the word… and the link 🙂

For more info and a great list of media features that have covered the TCC, click here!

While all of you have been taking finals, graduating, planning weddings, weathering thunderstorms, etc., I’ve been busy planning a big ol’ party!  At the library, late May means one thing, and one thing only: school’s out, and Summer Reading’s in.

This year we’re dressing up Summer Reading a little more fancy for adults, and our patrons seem really excited about it.  Tomorrow’s party launches the adult side of Summer Reading, where we sneakily sign up unsuspecting partygoers for a summer of books and reading, their mouths too full of free desserts to protest.  I had lots of fun writing the blurb that we then slathered all over our promotional materials:

Lawrence Public Library is kicking off Adult Summer Reading with a mixed-media Final Fridays extravaganza, featuring art for your eyes, ears, brain and mouth: from the visual to the literary, the musical to the culinary.

This year’s travel-themed Adult Summer Reading program highlights popular media from around the world. Tour the globe one continent at a time as you mingle your way through this unique social exhibit, chatting with library tour guides about what’s hot in the international literary arts scene, viewing visual art objects from Mexico to Indonesia, and tasting sumptuous culinary arts crafted by Four and Twenty Blackbirds pastries.

Cathy Hamilton, Director of Downtown Lawrence, will headline the event with tales and photos from the international cruise she won from Food and Wine Magazine this spring. Free and open to the public.

Today as we were setting up, my colleague and work buddy put it most aptly when she said “I feel like I’m back in high school decorating for the prom.”  Who knew that being a librarian could feel a little bit like prom-committee?  Throw in a dash of books, movies, arts, and culture, and holy cow… that’s my job.

Have I mentioned how excited I am that Cathy Hamilton, aka Boomer Girl, is helping us get this party started?  Wish me luck tomorrow night, and come on down to the party!

When kids in Lawrence, KS, are in second grade, they go out to the banks of the Kaw River to build mud huts and learn about the time Quantrill came over from Missouri to burn down the Free State.  15 years later, this Kansas-Missouri rivalry matures into college students chanting “Muck Fizzou” at basketball games.  And then there’s the civil war re-enactors…

This Wednesday, I met my first true Lawrencian Civil War Buffs!  My library plans to be involved with the Civil War on the Western Frontier Festival this August, which commemorates the anniversary of Quantrill’s bloody raid.  And so I was in the thick of it all, sitting at a planning meeting with the most hardcore of a town full of hardcore buffs.  When we went around the table for introductions, half introduced themselves as their civil war persona:  “John Brown.”  “Reverend Cordley.”  “The Honorable S.A. Riggs.”  Later someone suggested a Civil War movie, and a hush fell over the room: “That one’s from the Missouri perspective.”

I’ve never lived in a place that took such pride in its Free State Civil War roots.  It’s one of the things I love about living here  — slowly learning the culture, understanding what makes this community tick.  The arts.  College basketball.  Civil War re-enactments.  Who knew??  I think public libraries are in a great position to vitalize our communities by offering programs that really mean something to the people who live there, and I’ve been doing my best to learn what that means in Lawrence!  I can’t wait to see what the CWWF festival brings this August.  And I can’t wait to build my mud hut.

People are pretty weird!  In public service — or in customer service of any sort — it’s easy to get swept up in our clientele’s bizarre quirks.  And really, it wouldn’t be any fun without them.  But on the other hand, nearly all of our library patrons — even the exceptionally bizarre — are very decent people.  That’s what I love about my career in public service.  So, in honor of the decency of library patrons everywhere, I’ve got a quick story for you tonight.

It’s usually pretty slow on Friday nights, but that’s also when I’m asked some of the most unusual reference questions.  Tonight a patron came in to ask me how he could log-in to our website to see our Chilton’s auto repair manuals from home.  First he told me he was a mechanic, then he told me he didn’t know how to read.  I think he was expecting me — the librarian — to laugh or something, but instead I told him he could come around to my side of the desk and I’d show him where to go on the site.  He admitted then that he could read a little, but very slowly, and then he winked and told me he was a really good mechanic.  He loves the Chilton’s manuals because they have detailed visual diagrams, which are exactly the kind of information he needs to accomplish his work.  I showed him how he could get to the diagrams from home on our website, and he was so ecstatic that, at the end of the whole thing, he wrote down the name and number of his business and told me to call for free diagnostic services whenever I want.

I’m a little unsure about the policies and ethics surrounding this exchange; as a civil servant, I’m not sure that it would be right for me to accept a gift from a patron in exchange for my work — what do you guys think?  But what I loved about this exchange was that a) the patron’s information need was satisfied at the library, even though he’s not a big reader, b) we had a reciprocal exchange, viewing each other as peers who could contribute equally to the dialogue, and c) he was just really super nice.

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone, and I’ll see you back at the library soon!