Nancy Osgood and the Power of Perpetual Motion

To be a stop on Nancy Osgood's route is a wonderful thing.

She's a familiar sight as she zips from one place to another in town, from the Norwich Historical Society, of which she is a volunteer and president, to our library, where she performs the tasks that help our books to survive the many passages from library to patrons. Nancy is a book processor, adding the protective covering and identifying stamps and labels that mark the volumes of our collection and tell shelvers where they ought to be placed.

Nancy has always fascinated me. She is such a dynamo and has so much direction. A Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania native, Nancy taught fourth grade to the lucky children of Concord, Massachusetts, for many years. She still volunteers with children at the White River School, using the Orton-Gillingham method, a multi-sensory and kinetic program for improving decoding skills in young readers.

When Nancy isn't promoting literacy, protecting books, and fostering an interest in Norwich history, her idea of a good time is an archeological dig. She's gone after Jurassic mammal bones at the DInasaur National Montument and dug at the Popham Colony in Maine, a settlement which was a contemporary of Jamestown. She enjoys a good walk and loves spending time with her grown sons, both of whom live in the Boston area.

Simply being in Nancy's presence is energizing. Intelligent, generous, and community-spirited, she's a one-woman gift to the community. To Nancy, it's all no big deal. She says simply, "Life is full. So why sit around?"

Party On, Librarians

If you hear us clearing our throats this week and see us herding patrons in the direction of the Sunday New York Times Style section, it's only that our ship has come in at last. On the front page,a headline reads, "A Hipper Crowd of Shushers," and a deck below it adds,"Today's librarians? Think high-tech party people."

Well! It should take me no time at all to install black lights in the computer area, the better to highlight our da-glo make-up and fingernail polish. If our time has come, we mean to experience it fully. We'll install espresso and bistro bars in the non-fiction and fiction rooms respectively, and we'll have to remind Lucinda to hire us a house band. The new chairs in the fiction room should be perfect for all the soirees that lie ahead of us.

Oh, wait. That's the New York Times. I don't suppose we'll see bars that cater especially to the library crowd with Dewey Decimal-themed drinks any time soon. This is Vermont. Lucinda, cancel the band. Still, motivations for going into librarianship ring true:

Working as a librarian is intellectually stimulating, and the hours are reasonable, for those who have creative pursuits beyond work hours;
Handling information is a call to activism for idealistic folks who see bad things happening when access to information is restricted;
The increase of technology in libraries provides new challenges for a more diverse talent pool.
Librarians as a group are seen today as "smart, well-read, funny people who seem to enjoy their jobs."

Well, shucks. But we do enjoy the job, especially the patrons, who are a delightful part of it.

Psssst!

I wouldn't want to offend the copyright gods that control Tinseltown, but you should know that Children's Librarian Beth Reynolds will be offering a screening of a classic Hollywood comedy Thursday night, July 5, at 7 p.m.

By not naming it here, we can avoid paying a fat fee and can show it to you for free.

I saw this film at Dartmouth a couple of years ago, and it was hilarious. If you have children and want to take them to a great film that will truly delight the entire family, or if it's been years since you've seen the fellow in the picture, please join us!

You certainly won't be sorry.

Garrison Keillor's Library Fix

I've 'borrowed' this from Salon, the online magazine--Garrison Keillor's lovely tribute to America's libraries.

When politics gets mean and dumb, you can cheer yourself up by walking into a public library.
By Garrison Keillor

June 27, 2007 Consumer confidence was down in June, and so was mine, though for other reasons. I see politics stuck in a spiral of dumbness and the Republican candidates -- the Cavalcade of Unhappy White Men -- leading the way. The other day, Mr. Giuliani came out against "putting government in a situation where government is in charge of so many different things," and a short time later he called for the government to build a fence the length of the Mexican border, "a technological fence," which I guess means something fancier than a mud fence, possibly using kryptonite. And shortly thereafter, he and his fellow Republican candidates arm-wrestled to see who could be more in favor of torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques," as it's called now.

When politics gets mean and dumb, you can cheer yourself up by walking into a public library, one of the nobler expressions of democracy. Candidates don't mention libraries -- they're more likely to talk about putting people behind bars and no coddling or shilly-shallying with appeals and that judicial nonsense, just throw them in the dungeon and stick their heads in the toilet and do what you gotta do -- and yet when I walk into the library near my house and see a couple hundred teenagers studying, most of them Hmong or Vietnamese, I see the old cheerful America that Washington has lost touch with, the land of opportunity.

The library is the temple of freedom. Growing up, we kids were aware of how much of our lives was a performance for adults. In school, at church, in Scouts, adults were watching, cueing you, coaching, encouraging, commenting; but in the library, you didn't have to perform for the librarian. She simply presided over an orderly world in which you had the freedom of your own imagination. The silence was not repressive but liberating: to allow your imagination to play, uninhibited by others.

Of course, a boy's imagination headed in some directions that the public library could not satisfy, or would not satisfy -- I thought that those particular books were kept behind the librarian's counter and that if she liked me, she would let me see them, so I was a very, very good boy, but then it dawned on me that she probably thought a very, very good boy wouldn't be interested in that sort of thing. (This would happen to me often with women.)

Libraries have rushed forward into the new age (whichever one we're in now), and the word "librarian" is out. They're Information Professionals now, and it's a Media Resource Center, and it's wired to the max. Just as we novelists have become experiential document specialists producing sensory-data-based narratives encoded in a symbolic format that informally we refer to as English. But a library is still a library. It's a place where serious people go to have the freedom to think without anybody poking and prodding them, in the company of other serious people who sit silently around us and yet encourage us in our own pursuits and projects.

My old hometown Carnegie library with the columns and high-domed ceiling was irreplaceable, and so of course it was torn down by vandals in suits and ties and replaced with a low warehouse-looking library that says so clearly to its patrons, "Don't get any big ideas. This is as good a library as you clowns deserve." But the spirit lives on, in the ranks of dedicated women and men who run the place.

The ceremonial strut of candidates competing to show cruelty is pornographic politics. The thrill of talking about torture -- "I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of," said Mr. Giuliani. "Water-boarding?" asked a reporter. "... Every method they could think of," said Mr. Giuliani -- it was like a bad novel come to life. (The bald man looked out the window toward the trees where the prisoners were sitting chained to each other. He lit a cigarette. "Use every method you can think of," he said quietly. "How about red-hot needles?" asked the lieutenant. "How about dragging them behind trucks and beating them with barbed wire?" The bald guy smiled. "Spare me the details," he said. "And get me the information.")

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)
(c) 2007 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved.

Iraqi Libraries Struggle to Keep the Faith

Dedication is always an admirable trait in an employee, but its presence in Iraqi librarians is downright heroic.

Lucinda pointed me to the British Library's site which features the diaries of Iraq's director of the national library. In them he documents the power and water failures, the death threats against library employees and security guards, the lengthy and circuitous routes to work occasioned by the destruction of bridges and roads. Members of his family urge him to leave Baghdad for the security of a city less under siege. Corrupt government officials sit on their hands. The library staff swelters as generators fail. The sun itself (which he capitalizes, significantly) becomes an oppressor to be survived.

The British Library site includes a link to the web site of the Iraqi National Library. I clicked on it, only to have the connection "refused." As I read more of the diaries, I realized that once again, there was probably no power to the library. The diarist has to go to internet cafe to retrieve his emails, so often is there no connection to the library itself. (Update: I did get into the site Wednesday, June 27--it's really interesting and includes articles on restoring the country's national heritage and rebuilding the library. Try the link above; if you aren't successful the first time, keep trying. It's worth the effort.)

As I sat exclaiming over the diaries, children's librarian Beth Reynolds slipped downstairs and returned, bearing The Librarian of Basra, written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter. (The illustration above is from this book.) It's the true story of a dedicated librarian in that city who, when learning of the likelihood of war, began to take bags of books home, to see that they will be spared in the event that the library is bombed. As war became more and more inevitable, she enlists the neighbors of the library in her campaign, and in the course of a few sleepless nights, these guardians of literacy are able to relocate 70 per cent of the collection. Beautifully written and illustrated, it's a children's book worthy of the attention of adult readers.

Here my authorial voice fails. The danger, the destruction, the staff's persistent yearning for the light is more than I can fathom. Keep these brave people in your thoughts and prayers.

80 People Turn Out for Mark Breen

One lady said she'd always wondered what he looked like, with that resonant voice that turned the weather forecast into sheer poetry. Lots of people wanted to know more about the night sky.

So it turned out that 80 people provided Vermont Public Radio's Meteorologist Mark Breen with a standing room only audience in NPL's Community Room last night. The library staff had to remain outside the room in deference to preserving space for the public, although our Lisa did manage to insert one-half of one shoulder blade into general proximity of the presentation. If the room was hot, the reception was warm!

When it came time for the outdoor portion of the program to what Breen refers to as the visible night sky, the moon and Venus were the only objects bright enough for identification on the evening before the summer solstice. Mark Breen turns out to look as nice as his voice sounds, and the audience really seemed to enjoy what he had to say. There were lots of questions, always a good sign.

For those who didn't quite fit into the Community Room or find the time to attend the presentation, Mark left behind a little of himself: the interactive kiosk from the Fairbanks Museum. When I first saw it, I asked where the joy stick might be found. It looks almost like a video game! Instead, it holds a computerizedl presentation on the planets, and for all those who felt a pang of regret at the declassification of Pluto, a view of it and its sort-of-moon, Charon, is still there for the seeing, along with the rest of those "rocks" who have held onto their jobs.

Come by the library and wander the heavens with the kiosk. It'll be across from the circulation desk till July 18.

Summer Reading for Kids: Definitely Not Clueless

This summer's vacation reading program comes with lots of extra possibilities.

Dubbed Get a Clue @ Your Library, this summer reading program offers more than books.

Along with the rich reading fare that is has become a staple to NPL's young patrons, there is the opportunity provided by excursions designed by the good people at Valley Quest.

I'm always interested in discovering what pockets of illiteracy remain in my considerable self. Clearly, I was clueless about Valley Quest. When I asked Children's Librarian Beth Reynolds about the connection between the Get a Clue theme and Valley Quest, she shot me a look that said, "Oh, you poor dear," (my interpretation, I'm sure) and then told me that Valley Quests were actually treasure hunts. In any of the adventures taken by the Questers lies a box, the quest destination, if you will, at which place successful Questers can leave evidence of their having been there and can, at the same time, discover the names of others who have been similarly successful. Sounds like great fun for families and groups of friends.

Beth tells me that she's hoping that her young readers and their families will avail themselves of the Valley Quest option, in addition to the time for relaxed, recreational reading. To offer support to that end, she's offering a rubber stamp workshop for families on Monday, June 25, at 7 p.m. Participants will be given both the know-how and materials for making rubber stamps for the families--a great way to sign off on having found the magic boxes that are part of the Quests. It's a good idea for families to come to this workshop together, since some of the tools used for making rubber stamps are a bit sharp and best handled by the More Mature generation (or so we like to think of ourselves).

Because space will be limited and Beth hopes to have materials for everyone, interested families should call 649-1184 to save a space.