July 3rd, 2007 Brian Herzog
I don’t know if this is bad luck, along the same lines seeing a bride before her wedding, but here are a couple “before” photos of my library’s float for Chelmsford’s 4th of July Parade [pdf].
Since we did a One Town, One Book program this year featuring Richard Russo’s Empire Falls, that’s the theme chosen for the float. It is supposed to look like the inside of the Empire Grill, a diner featured in the story, and people will be dressed in character passing out copies of the book, pins and magnets.
On the right side of the picture is the diner’s door, and on the far left is a backdrop painted to look like an average scene from a New England mill town (the backdrop is also a wooden Very Large Book). The dinery part will be in the middle, complete with counter, table, chairs, menus, ketchup bottles, etc.
I’m sure it will look better at the parade tomorrow.
And for my part, instead of riding on the float, I made the “Empire Grill” sign. It is supposed to look like a neon diner sign, but I think it looks like what it is - some plastic tubing spray-painted neon orange nailed to a piece of plywood spray-painted black. But at least people will be far away, and it’ll be moving.
Happy Independence Day, everyone.
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Tags: chelmsford, chelmsford library, chelmsford public library, empire falls, empire grill, float, libraries, Library, One Book, one town one book, parade, parade float, public libraries, public library, richard russo See Also
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November 9th, 2006 Brian Herzog
As part of my library’s “One Book” program, I spent the evening of Election Day at a local polling place, asking people to vote for their choice for “One Book.” Overall it was a positive experience, in that I felt like a lot of people were interested in voting and supporting the library.
However, this is the first time I’ve ever been in the wild on behalf of the library, and it was really eye-opening. I mean, I spend most of my time either in the library helping people who come to me (who therefore are supportive library users), or in talking with other librarians (or reading their blogs).
So, I was really surprised by some of the reactions I got at the polling place as I asked people to vote for the book they would like to read. Of course there was what I expected (”sure,” and “hey, that’s a neat idea”) and what I was happy to hear (”oh, I read about this in the paper,” and “the library is so great”), but there was also the other extreme.
I guess it is because I am fairly surrounded with pro-library people (and those forward-thinking pro-library 2.0‘ers) that I was so unprepared for that other extreme. Here’s a sampling of a few of the answers I got to me asking “Would you like to vote for the Library’s One Book Program?”:
- No, I don’t read.
- Hahahahaha…
- What the hell is the point of the entire town reading the same book?
- I’ve never heard of any of these books.
- Can’t you see that I don’t have time for this?
- Do I get a prize?
- The library? Why do you even bother?
And these comments didn’t come from rowdy/disrespectful toughie kids - these comments came from adults. Not that I was upset or scarred by any of this, just surprised. It was such a far cry from all of the “you have to do IM reference and offer RSS feeds to survive” kind of talk that I usually hear.
As a public librarian, I really do include everyone who lives in town (and beyond) under the “patron” umbrella, and not just students, or parents of storytime kids, or some other target market segment. I guess this really stuck with me because it was a very definite demonstration that, no matter what the library does, and no matter how we use technology to reach out with service, there will always be people we want to serve that we never will.
But since that’s far too melancholy a note on which to end this post, how about this: a hotdog walks into a bar and asks for a beer. The bartender looks at him and says, “sorry, we don’t serve food.”
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Posted under Library, Service | 5 Comments »
