Saturday, July 12, 2008

Chris and I are in the midst of a frantic apartment search. Keeping up with school work hasn't been difficult, only life's many distractions keep me from really meditating on the issues at hand. (Can this confession be held against me?)

I crossed the 600 mark this week, my second week doing Summer Reading Outreach in Germantown, Mt. Airy, and East Falls. We're challenged to see 2000 kids over the course of the summer. While I'm pleased the progress I need to make MANY more contacts. Libraries are tyrannically ruled by statistics. I understand what they are supposed to measure but they fall far short of really being meaningful.

One principal at a local elementary shared a pretty cynical view of libraries as we talked Friday morning. I was excited to tell her about the new relevance and vision of libraries here in this digital age. The skepticism clouding her eyes lessened the more we talked. I had a similar conversation with an old friend this week. We hadn't spoken to one another in quite a while so he was just finding out about my interest in librarianship. He couldn't figure out how I could follow a path beginning in the art world and land in a library. :) After discussing the relevance of public libraries and the technological explosion around us he shared my epiphany and suddenly saw libraries in a totally different way. Not as they are in our memories or in the present transitional state but in the light of the future of libraries. In a society that has reordered the familiar, where the stuffy quite library of the elite has become the heart of a community. How? By working to equalize the growing digital divide, providing free information to ALL, supporting community development through hosting events and activities, feeding the hunger for literacy skills and more.

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