Getting the Book Club in a Bag project ready for launch is taking longer than we’d expected! The books have come in and are being processed and the discussion materials are being assembled. We’re still working on finalizing the checkout process. There will be approximately 24 titles available and all are appropriate for young adult and adult book clubs. The librarians chose a mix of classics and newer books, a few of which include The Great Gatsby, Isaac’s Storm, The War of the Worlds, Murder on the Orient Express, My Sister’s Keeper, and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Click here for a complete list of titles and details about how your club can use this program. The titles that already have been processed may be found by searching our online catalog. Use book club in a bag in the search box.

The Book-Club-in-a-Bag project is  made possible by a grant from the Friends of the Georgetown Library, which raises money for the library through memberships and fund-raising activities.

Are you an avid reader? Do you have friends who like to read as much as you do? Looking for the perfect teacher’s gift? Need a hostess gift? Stumped about what to buy the person who has everything?

Look no further.  Buy them all a 2010 BOOK LOVER’S CALENDAR.  And don’t forget to pick up one for yourself, too. Each day’s page will bring a new suggestion for an interesting book to read.  And the library will make sure that they have them all in inventory.  Most of the recommended books, both fiction and non-fiction, were published within the last twenty-four months.

The Friends of the Georgetown Public Library will sell the 2010 Book Lover’s Page-a-Day Calendar in the lobby of the Georgetown Library November 9 through November 14.  Your purchases will help support the Georgetown Library’s projects and programs. Attractively priced, the BOOK LOVER’S CALENDAR will sell for $9.00 each including sales tax.  The suggested retail price is $12.95 plus tax, so it is a great bargain.  Start your holiday shopping early, at the Georgetown Public Library.  They’ve even gift wrapped some of them for you in pretty gold and cream paper!

For more information, contact Necia Chessman at 868-1534, or nchessman@verizon.net.

As the library staff and the Friends both wound down their fiscal years last month, some year-end purchasing took place. Each year the Friends approve certain projects that the library staff proposes, but each project is scheduled for funding during a specific quarter of the year. Fourth quarter projects included new equipment for the children’s room and Book Clubs in a Bag for adults and young adults.

In the children’s room there’s the crawl-through climber, a worm-like structure that invites exploration, a new display unit for the bin books, and a floor mat and vinyl blocks that will be used primarily for our lap-sit storytimes (storytimes for children who are not yet one year old). Also, Ms. Kathleen will be enjoying a swell new cart for transporting the many things she needs for the six storytime sessions she does each week.

The Book Club in a Bag idea is one that Richard Groves, our public services librarian, and Bethni King, our young adult librarian, have been discussing for some time. A Book Club in a Bag includes ten paperback copies of a book along with general suggestions for organizing a book club and specific discussion questions for the book in the bag. Bags will be checked out for two months—long enough for club members to have plenty of time to read the selection before it will be discussed at their meeting. Titles that are available include some classics and some recent bestsellers—fifteen titles in all. Watch for publicity about this program when the bags are ready to be checked out.

The library will be closed for its annual inventory and housekeeping Monday through Friday, October 5 – 9. During this time no materials will come due, but our bookdrop will be open if you wish to return something.

To do inventory, we first put the collection in order, then scan the barcodes of the items on the shelves to create a list of what’s actually present. The computer compares that list with the list of what should be on the shelves, to determine which items are missing. More often than not, we’re happy to find that items we thought were lost were simply shelved incorrectly and had been impossible to find. (It’s always an interesting job to look for those kinds of “lost” items that come to our attention throughout the year. We have a few staff members who are real experts at thinking like errant shelvers and they manage to find misplaced items in very obscure places.)

While we’re closed we also take the opportunity to do deep cleaning of floors and carpets, and, if we’re lucky, the upholstered furniture. With this coming year’s tight budget we’re not sure how many of those tasks will be done but we’re scheduling all we can. Painting sometimes takes place during this week, too, but again, maintenance is being deferred this year in the interest of living within a reduced budget.

It’s always a scramble to get everything back in place before we reopen on Saturday, and the staff members who work that day are always braced for an onslaught of pent-up demand. Thank goodness it’s a short day!

All citizen boards that the City Council appoints are associated with departments or divisions of the City of Georgetown. The seven-member Arts and Culture Board is associated with the library and Eric Lashley, the library director, and Judy Fabry, the library’s administrative assistant, are the staff members who are liaisons to the Board. During the past six months, since the unveiling of the “Waterin’ the Work Mules” sculpture in front of Council Chambers, the Board has been laying the groundwork for some new projects.

The first of these projects, which will become public in October, is being done in cooperation with ArtWorks, a Georgetown nonprofit dedicated to raising the profile of art on the Square. The Board granted ArtWorks $4000 for lightpost banners to celebrate October as Art Month in Georgetown. ArtWorks has been soliciting local artists for images that are expressions of this year’s Art Month theme, Happy Trails. ArtWorks is aiming to have sixty images that will be turned into original art banners for the downtown lightposts. A sneak preview of some of the images already selected revealed brightly colored renditions of a broad array of subjects. The Square is going to look knock-your-socks-off great! An additional ten banners will simply say Georgetown Art and Culture, in recognition of the role the Arts and Culture Board played in the project.

The Board is also hoping to unveil a new sculpture project in San Gabriel Park in October. They are establishing a rotating exhibit of borrowed sculptures that will be installed at five locations in the park and will remain on display for a year. At the end of the year, a different group of sculptures will be installed. This project is modeled on a similar one in downtown Marble Falls.  During the next six weeks the Board hopes to get the limestone bases for the sculptures installed and agreements signed with the artists who will provide the pieces for the first year’s show.

Did you know that one of the services many libraries offer is test proctoring? That is, if you are taking a self-taught course for which tests are required, librarians have long served as verifiable outside persons whom you may ask to administer the tests. The Georgetown Public Library has offered this service for many years and, until the past few years, our chief users were people who were taking real estate exams or kids who were being home schooled. Now, however, with more and more courses being taught online, the reference staff spends many hours per week proctoring exams.

You’re probably thinking, “Hours per week?  How much trouble could it be to just hand someone a test and take it back when they’re finished?” Ah, if only it were that easy. There’s setting up the appointment to administer the test, establishing a relationship with the institution that the student is working with, assuring that the test is available at the agreed upon time, monitoring the time period that is allowed for the test, preparing the test for mailing/shipping, and sometimes, actually delivering the test to the shipper.

Many libraries, facing the increased demands for proctors, instituted fees for the service. Our library does not charge. And some central Texas libraries have simply stopped offering the service, which they have the prerogative to do. Therefore, in addition to the increase in demand for proctoring due to more people studying independently, we also are seeing test-takers who previously used the proctoring services at other libraries.

Our library director does not want to charge for proctoring, nor does he want to discontinue the service. However, our staff cannot meet the demand and still take care of their library responsibilities. So, effective immediately, our staff will proctor only for those persons who have been members of the Georgetown Public Library for at least 90 days. Library membership is free to residents of Georgetown and non-residents may purchase library memberships for $25 dollars per year. We also have reduced the hours during which proctoring is available. Click here for complete information about our proctoring services.

During the summer our community’s teens are a bit more visible in the library than during the rest of the year, but Ms. Bethni has been doing some things she hopes will bring them here on a regular basis. She recently purchased two 42” plasma HDTVs to use in her teen programs. Last fall she had asked the Friends of the Library for $1300 for one large-screen TV and the Friends agreed to fund it after July 1, 2009. So, last month, when Bethni began shopping around, she realized that prices had dropped so dramatically since fall that she would be able to purchase two TVs for the price one had been a year ago. This was a fine stroke of luck because she uses TVs (the library already owns two elderly small-screen TVs) for the Wii gaming events that the kids enjoy so much. Two large-screen TVs will definitely add to the fun. Of course, the TVs also will be available for other library uses, such as showing movies, or, in our lobby as a platform for advertising library programs.

The library staff recognizes how lucky we are to be able to ask the Friends for a large-screen TV—something that probably would be considered an extravagance if we requested it in our City budget. The Friends are knowledgeable enough about 21^st century libraries to be aware that attracting teenagers to the public library is not easy. All over the country, YA librarians are using electronic gaming events to get teens in their doors. Even if those kids don’t use the other resources that are available for them, they’ve broken the most difficult barriers to becoming a library user—they’ve located the library, come in and looked around, and found that it’s not quite as stuffy as they had imagined. Maybe they’ll return, either to attend another teen program, or maybe, just maybe, to use the public computers, to check out a music CD, a DVD, or even a book.

Ms. Bethni also has made some other changes that she hopes will entice teens to spend time in the library. If you’re a library user you may have noticed the gradual transformation of the area north of the main circulation desk (as you face the windows on 8^th Street). Just as we have a designated Children’s Room, Ms. Bethni has been working for more than a year to paint walls, and position and rearrange furniture, shelving, and room dividers to create a space in which teens can feel comfortable. She purchased the three booths that are lined up along the windows specifically for the teens to use, and with more financial help from the Friends, put down area rugs, brought in special bookcases, and put up moveable display panels to show off some amazing creative projects she’s had the teens working on during the past few months.

If you’ve sat down in one of the teen area booths lately, you may have read a cryptic sign telling you that if you answer “no” to any of the questions on the sign you should be sitting upstairs. I failed the test hands down because I even had to ask Bethni what the signs meant! She gently explained that she was trying to suggest that adults move out of the booths. I suggested she was being way too subtle. She’s added some more pointed signs since then, so don’t take offense.

Bethni’s made the teen area very inviting, but if you’re older than 18, please pass through, enjoy the art, browse and check out the books if you so desire, but leave the seating for the younger set. There’s plenty of seating just east of the teen area and plenty of counter space with wi-fi access on the second floor, behind the reference desk. Let’s give the idea of a designated teen space a chance to work. When I passed through the teen area recently there was a teenager in each of the booths plus a group of four or five sitting in the easy chairs, chatting and looking at materials. They all seemed quite content to be in the library!

At the grand finale of the summer reading program, Ms. Rosa awarded trophies and $100 savings bonds to three outstanding readers. Abby Kirk, age 8, read the greatest number of books, Raul Garza, age 11, read for the greatest number of hours, and Cody Hullum, age 4, listened to the most books (category for anyone age 5 or younger). Besides reading, they, or in Cody’s case, his mom, did the less exciting jobs of keeping their online logs up to date. It is likely that a number of kids read as much or even more than Abby, Raul, and Cody, but they couldn’t be considered when the final tallies were made because they missed the deadline or did not maintain an online reading log. The good news, of course, is that everyone who read during the summer will reap the benefits of having practiced their reading skills and will return to school better prepared to resume learning where they left off.

The full and complicated schedule of events that make the children’s summer program the success that it is requires a small village of people who give very generously of their talents and time. Ms. Rosa and the rest of the library staff are extremely grateful to the following people who helped lighten the load for all of us by providing extra hands and organizational skills at the special events:

Debbie, Stephanie, Elizabeth & Carolyn Abe

Mary Adams

Lori Barker

Charles Berry

Marla Brown

Chris Carpenter

Terri Hahn

Stephanie Hoelscher

Linda Mahaffey

Rachael Mahagan

Martha Paul

Christian Penichet

Sadaf & Sarah Rafique

Xye Sample

Sarah Siems

Ashlyn Wade

Marissa Wade

Diana, Alison & Erika Young

Special thanks to Chris Guadian, our library intern, who had no idea how much heavy lifting librarians do. He valiantly stuck with us, moving chairs, tables, and computers countless times in the meeting rooms so that the programs for the kids, tweens, and teens could go on.

While Ms. Rosa is able to pay for some of the summer’s entertainment, the following people, who generously gave of their talents without compensation, collectively provided nearly half of the summer special events:

• Laura Snyder (eight craft sessions)
• Mary Beth Huba (four storytelling sessions and two cake decorating classes)
• Linda Wilde and daughter Olivia (two jewelry-making classes)
• Angela Plunkett and daughters (a sewing class)
• Debbie Scott (cut the felt for all of the sewing projects)
• The Clayman Family (a rodeo!)
• Danielle Woliver (baked cakes for the decorating class)
• Robyn Clay (two kiddie exercise classes)
• John Miller (martial arts demonstration with his students)
• Sun City Sundancers (square dancing at the finale)
• Sunshine Flower (face-painter extraordinaire who worked for 3 hours non-stop at the finale)
• Travis Cook (artist who painted the Texas icons on the windows of the children’s room)

Many businesses provided coupons or merchandise, which we used as incentive prizes throughout the summer and for which we were very grateful:

Carl’s Jr.

Casa Ole

Chick-Fil-A

CiCi’s Pizza

Cotton Patch Cafe

Craig O’s Pizza

Daylight Donuts

Gatti-Land

Pedernales Electric

Red Poppy Cafe

Shake’s Frozen Custard

Whataburger

Two businesses deserve special recognition because they contributed significantly to the refreshments for some of our events. McDonald’s provided orange juice and cups for the kick-off and the picnic in Chautauqua Park. Papa John’s donated 40 of the 60 pizzas that were consumed at the grand finale.

And finally, First Texas Bank, which has supported the summer reading program for the past sixteen years, donated the three $100 savings bonds that were the prizes for the recognized readers.

The staff of the Children’s Room usually take a breather during August and suspend storytime for a month. This year, though, they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bring in Dr. Kurunthottical (she calls herself Dr. K), of the Pearl Family Practice in Georgetown, to talk about the health and safety issues going to school presents.

Dr. K. will begin her presentation at 10:30 a.m., in the Children’s Room. The information she wants to share will be for kids and caregivers alike.  Cookies will be served and one of our balloon animal creators will be making critters for the kids to take home.

Another exciting children’s attraction moved, although not under its own power, into the library in June. A real two-seater classic open Jeep, sans all moving parts, is now waiting at the entrance of the Children’s Room to take interested parties on imaginative rides to anywhere in the world or beyond. This is another of Director Lashley’s projects, one that has been in the works since the new library opened. Chuck Croslin, the architect for our new building, donated the vehicle, in somewhat less than perfect condition, about a year ago.

The Jeep project captured the imagination of all who worked on it and the finished product reflects the pride they took in their work. During the past year, working when they had time between jobs, the crew at the City’s Vehicle Service Center drained all the fluids, removed the Jeep’s engine and transmission, modified the floor and removed the pedals, modified the suspension so that the body won’t bounce, and manufactured a hood. Then our good neighbors at David Collision Repair donated the finish body work, a camo paint job and interior upholstery. Finally, the figured out how to make the vehicle safe and accessible for children. To discourage kids from crawling under it they built an enclosed wooden deck that completely surrounds the Jeep; steps on one side make it easy for the kids to climb in. For the enthusiasm, dedication, and patience of the many individuals who worked on this project we are more grateful than we can say. Our village is taking very good care of our children. Now, it’s up to you to bring the kids in for a test drive!