Library design eye candy

For the past few weeks, I have had a big coffee table style book on my desk at work called Library Architecture + Design. There are some fantastic designs in there, so I thought I would share my favourites (you’re better off checking out the websites, since the copy in the book is really poorly edited)

• Chilean National Library, Founders Hall (it’s like a study room hovercraft!!!)
• Kazakhstan National Library
• The Scholar’s Library in Olive Bridge, New York
• Book Mountain in Spijkenissse, the Netherlands (my team agreed we are re-designing CA to look like this!)

And with points for sheer crazy:

• Historical Archive and Library of Palermo

One of only 2 Canadian choices was Bloor/Gladstone Branch, TPL, but I much prefer the reno at St Clair-Dufferin.

Seen reading on OC Transpo

• Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines by Diane Harley, Sophia Krzys Acord, Sarah Earl-Novell, Shannon Lawrence, C. Judson King
• Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang
• The Spontaneous Healing of Belief: Shattering the Paradigm of False Limits by Gregg Braden
• Something by Sue Grafton
• In Search of My Self : Signposts along the Way by Basil Arbour
• A book in Chinese
• Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy by E L James (you knew it was inevitable!)
• Just After Sunset by Stephen King
• Lucid Intervals by Stuart Woods
• Me: latest issue of LRC!

Husband's reading list #2

In the ongoing saga of perilously-constructed towers, an update....


The last one on the bottom is a Life magazine pub about Bob Dylan.

Hey, Lorie, no library books! For shame, eh? But he has 2 from Ottawa U, if that makes it ok. They are just in the library pile so they don't get lost.

Less colourful than last time, isn't it? Colour choices in nonfiction: debate.

I'll be back soon with longer posts with actual full sentences. I'm just totally swamped and at least two weeks behind (after CLA, being sick, and a great - but tiring - trip to Toronto and Kitchener last weekend).

The CLA Conference in pictures

So many experiences to distill into a bog post! I am working on some notes from a few sessions I was able to attend despite Local Arrangements Committee duties and THE PLAGUE, which descended on me on the day we were stuffing the bags and doing conference prep. Basically, I spent the first half of the conference with a fiery throat and no voice, and the second half hawking up crap and still unable to talk. Good times.

Anyway, I did manage to have a lot of fun, too:

We stuffed bags.

A LOT of bags:

I am so lucky to have the best team in the history of the world, and two of them, Laura and Helena, created this colour-coded master schedule for the volunteers at the conference. Genius.

Opening keynote:

Delegate feedback to opening keynote:

Laura and I getting silly with the room decorations in Local Arrangements Committee office

Screenshot from Tina Thomas from Edmonton Public Library's great presentation entitled Making a Lasting Impression: Building our Brand in our Branches (this slide = "Do you have a signage problem?")

Here is the first thing I learned at the Great Debate: masks kind of totally scare me.

In other news, the debate was awesome. The topic was “Be it resolved that the core values of modern librarianship areantiquated and obsolete,” and Stephen Abram, Robin Thiessen Hepher, Mike Ridley and Andrea Siemens nailed it with an examination of whether we actually live our values. Some choice quotes:

• "Why did Occupy make their own libraries? Maybe bc ours close at 5."
• "Slacktivism! Petitions are what the powerless people do."
• "Access is equal to, in one province, a fee. In one national library, an appointment."

I hung out with my NELI ladiez.

I was star-struck by Kit Pearson. As Megan phrased it so well, it is such an honour and a privilege to grow up reading someone's books, and then be able to give them an award!

Ryerson's Chief Librarian Madeleine Lefebvre kicked it at Battle Decks. Here, she is explaining how a certain gait will make you more flexible, and allow you to, um, innovate.

This was my favourite Battle Decks slide, noting the intersecting area as "Shitty movies."

A more serious post is forthcoming, but I will leave you here with Vin.

Crazy / exciting news that broke while I was in CLA mode

• Madeline Miller won the Orange Prize
• Brent council acted like thieves in the night
• At CLA: all heck broke loose during/after keynote speech (CLA response)

Friday: Lunch hour reading with Angie Abdou at Main Library

If you're not at #CLAOTT2012 (look it up!) this Friday, as I will be, or if you need a lunchtime break (ahem - visit the Exhibit Hall! - but anyway), I would encourage you to check out this great event at the Main Library with 2011 Canada Reads finalist Angie Abdou.

Friday, June 1, 12:00 –1:00 pm
Ottawa Public Library, Main Branch, 120 Metcalfe Street
From the poster: "It’s the last ski weekend of the season and a mishmash of snow-enthusiasts is on its way to a remote backwoods cabin. In an odd pilgrimage through the mountains, the townsfolk of Coalton—from the ski bum to the urbanite—embark on an adventure that walks the line between comedy and tragedy. In an avalanche of action, Abdou explores the ways in which people treat their fellow citizens and the landscape they love."

Angie Abdou's first novel, The Bone Cage, a finalist in the 2011 Canada Reads debates, #1 on CBC's Book Club’s Top 10 Sports Books, and a pick for Canadian Literature magazine’s “All-Time Top Ten List of Best Canadian Sports Literature.” Abdou has also published a short story collection called Anything Boys Can Do; The Canterbury Trail, a "Canadian mountain adventure," is her second novel.

Hot sessions @ CLA

Today is two weeks exactly before the conference starts, at the Ottawa Convention Centre. Aside from running around like a crazy person with a 2-way radio doing Local Arrangements, here are the events/sessions I am hoping to make it to (ambitious, I know, considering.....):

• Wednesday night opening reception (duh)
• Thursday 9 am: Opening Ceremonies & Keynote Speaker Daniel J. Caron, Deputy Head and Librarian and Archivist of Canada and Chair, Heads of Federal Agencies. Oh yes. That should be interesting..... Caron is also doing a "Hot Topic" at 1 pm, but I think I'd rather be at the below instead. I would imagine both sessions will be colourful if there is some audience involvement. These are some crazy times.
• Thursday 1 pm: Community Impact: Transforming Lives through Libraries ("how public libraries create programs, advocate to stakeholders, and determine measurable outcomes") with some peeps from Gale.
• Thursday 4 pm: The Great Debate (always entertaining). This year, it's Michael Ridley and Stephen Abram debating "Be it resolved that the core values of modern librarianship are antiquated and obsolete."
• Thursday evening, I am triple-booked (thanks for that!): NELI alumni reception, Book Awards, and the pub crawl. We'll see if I last until the crawl....
• Friday 10:30 am: Tag... We’re It! The World of Interlibrary Loan. I feel like I should be there so I can learn more for my students next year ....
• Friday 1:30 pm: Getting your Library From Good to Great with my old friend Lita Barrie, now the Chief Librarian of the Grimsby Public Library ("Explore how to help your library thrive in these times of change and uncertainty. Gain practical strategies on making the most of the resources you have to take your library from good to great.")
• Friday 3 pm: No More Excuses! with Nancy Dowd from NoveList. I have no excuses for not being there because I am convening. I love Nancy's blog, so I am really psyched about this session ("This presentation will show you how ingenuity, a bit of technology and the belief that libraries matter to communities can conquer all the barriers stopping you from getting the word out about what your library is doing.")
• Friday evening: either chillin' with Lora and my peeps or grazing at the all-delegates social. Or both. Or neither.
• Saturday 8:30 am: CLA BATTLE DECKS! I want to cheer on Megan Fitzgibbons, OPL's own Beth Goslett, Robyn Stockand, Melanie Sellar, and OPL Board member Christine Langlois, all friends of mine! I know the best peeps.
• Saturday 1 pm: The Big Society and UK Libraries: Lessons for Canadian Libraries with CILIP president Phil Bradley. Again, convening, so gotta be there. Very excited about this one, too, since it's the ancestral homeland and all.
  
• Saturday 3 pm: Closing ceremonies with secret crush Evan Solomon.

And here are some other sessions I think are also totally note-worthy, although I might not make it to them. I've excluded hot topics and big issues like copyright, as those ones are pretty easy to find on the CLA website and get a lot of attention:

• Friday 1:30 pm: Canadian Challenges Survey 2011: Update on Library Resources and Policies Challenged in Publicly-Funded Libraries - always disturbing...
• Friday 3 pm: Rebuilding the Slave Lake Library: Surviving Tragedy and Lessons Learned.
• Saturday 1 pm: Evolution and Transformations. "In Autumn 2011, 19 library directors, senior staff, architects and other library leaders embarked on a four-country 22 library tour in Northern Europe and Scandinavia."

Fun fact for the day

I'm trying to be a good girl these days, and really support the independents we have left, so I was placing a special order with Collected Works, and I learned something interesting. I think it's kind of cool that I have been in the book biz one way or the other since 1998, but I didn't really think about this until now.

Books are still shipped from the UK to Canada by boat. It takes several weeks, and they are packed in waterproof pallets. So, as the salesperson told me, once a shipment of books for a book launch event was sunk on the way over (eek!) but actually did arrive (very late), perfectly intact, due to the great packing.

Heck, I want to take a boat across the Atlantic!

P.S. I was ordering this.

P.P.S. I wanted a quirky image for this, so I went with something I remember my English grandfather, Alexander Edward, teaching me to make, circa 1986, during a church service in Cambridge.

Go on, judge a book by its cover

The covers of what I've been reading over the past few months.

One of my favourite features in Quill & Quire is the Cover to cover piece, in which a designer discusses the challenges and evolution of a particular book cover design. Q&Q also does a nice covers of the year feature, too. And of course, Penguins, arguably the most recognisable covers ever, have been turned into everything from skateboards to band-aids.

So imagine my excitement to discover this morning a news item about a new blog, Talking Covers, for authors, designers, and artists to discuss book covers. Delish.

However, the City blocked me from seeing Talking Covers from work (nice, IT, nice!) so I had to wait until now to enjoy it properly.

I'm totally always a sucker for retro covers, such as this or this. I also like simple ones like this, this or the plan grey dust-jacketed Fabers, or opulent ones like the cover of White Teeth. What's your favourite book cover?

News from my library in April

Spring has sprung, my pretties. If I ever have a yard, I want a few magnolia trees, 'k?

Here's what's been keeping us busy these days at work:

• Community connections: We attended the Dovercourt Recreation Centre’s Annual Social Services West lunch. We made connections with people working with over a dozen local organisations. I can't say enough about the amazing work that John does at Dovercourt. I also visited three community contacts to promote our survey for older adults and discuss partnership opportunities for programs for adults and seniors, and organised an info kiosk at the Carlingwood Mall to promote library services. We also participated in the 7th Annual Youth Business Conference.
• Special guests: Author James Bartleman and our new Ottawa Public Library CEO, Danielle McDonald, both visited the branch, and we also had a placement student from Algonquin College learning and working with us for three weeks.
• Special events: Our teens, and our teen librarian, helped emcee the Teen Tech Awards. Check out some pix here.
• We celebrated a member of our team with a Bravo card (Bravo cards are distributed throughout the city as part of the Employee Recognition Program, for managers and supervisors to recognise achievement).
• Our Children's book clubs: one watched The Librarian from the Black Lagoon and ate banana bread and berries, while the other munched goldfish crackers while discussing Edgar Allan's Official Crime Investigation Notebook. Our teen book club discussed the Louder than Words non-fiction series.
• Meetings: We had our second branch staff meeting, held on two consecutive days (same meeting; different staff present), the Children's Info team had a meeting, and my direct team at Adult Info had its first meeting.
• We were bloggers, and blogged about.

ABQLA 2012: Notes on "Opening up: Innovation and Access"

A very, very old ABQLA logo from the archives

Keynote: The Future of the Digital Library with Sarah Houghton

It was pretty cool to meet Sarah in person. She was with us to talk about what the library of the future look like, post-tech revolution and post-budget cuts. Her talk opened with her asking what libraries are today, and what we want them to be. She asked us if money, bureaucracy and political will were no objects, what three things would we do differently in libraries? She pointed out that some of these things we are thinking about right now (in response to that question) are achievable, and some are perhaps even goals we might share with colleagues in the room, if we were to ask them!

Sarah called for us to re-affirm our core library values and be less reactive. Her talk focused on these core values, including:

• Providing complete and balanced collections and information
  
• Ensuring we provide education, entertainment, and self-improvement
  
• Research assistance
  
• Freedom of information access
  
• Information privacy and security

She also spoke at great length about society's "fragmented" modern life, and the implications of new technologies on libraries.

• Beginning with basics: we need to better communicate the non-book materials we already have! People know that the library has books, and yet what do we advertise often? Books! We don't need to advertise our books! What people don't know about is everything else we have.
  
• The modern "device continuum:" it is really difficult to ensure library catalogues will work on and with every device ever created! Things look better/worse or work/don't work on certain devices; however, given the shift in the rate at which people use mobile as their primary access point for data (astronomical), we have to keep up.
• Touch screens are ubiquitous. Kids don't remember life before touch screens. One great idea Sarah shared was using touch screens (iPads) as end-of-shelf range displays: they can flash the call # range, and then flash an ad for an upcoming program. I thought that was cool.
• Pretty soon, your data will always be with you (before I even had time to master the Cloud, I guess it's gone?): paint that becomes a touch screen wall will soon be available and will display your data when you walk in the room with your device in your pocket.
• How will internet TV affect AV collections? There are no online alternatives for libraries (eg. Netflix for libraries). What role does the library have to provide TV in the future?
• Download vs streaming: we are moving away from "I want to own this movie/album" to "I will accept having access to everything for $10/mo." People won't use all of it but they like to know it's there. So, think about how this would work for libraries: the ultimate in patron-driven acquisition.
• 3D printing and augmented reality: these have implications for local communities (history, genealogy, or small business) - what your community has that no one else does. When it comes to augmented reality, your library can match the physical reality with the local info from your archives. You can hold your camera phone up and see what used to be where building x used to be. More on this later from Fiacre below.
• There are implications for our profession when it comes to 'net neutrality: privileging certain data over other data (eg. cheques changing hands, companies deciding to prioritise YouTube traffic over Netflix, photo downloads over video). We need to be aware of legislation regarding these issues.
• Social media: Many in our communities remain unaware that, as with Facebook, "if you are getting something for free, you are the product."
• The challenge of digital proliferation is an opportunity for us: it gives us a lot of chances to reach people where they are.
• Digital collections: user awareness, formats, DRM, owning and leasing models, device support.
• Information services: we are still the only place where you can ask anything (I don't know how much I really feel this is a core professional value anymore, to be honest. Yes, you can ask anything, and we still need librarians for the in-depth research questions, but I don't think you need librarians staffing public library Reference or Information desks...)
  
• Programming: the digital divide and the long tail. In a time of reduced budgets, Sarah suggests libraries focus on the "middle section: the sorta haves" (they have technology, but not tech knowledge).
• Library websites = ugly gargantuan tower of awfulness. Don't focus on brand names on your website, eg. "Click here for EBSCO...." Focus on function, not brand or category.
• "Go mobile or go home."
• Sarah spoke about a great project for free ebooks: The Open Library Data project, from Internet Archive.
  
• "Spend some time sitting in your public computer area. I'll give you $20 if your butt doesn't hurt." Oh crap, she's got me there!
• Sarah told a great story about how weird it was as she was walking out of a concert, and everyone was in line hovering over photos they had just taken five seconds ago. It was odd, but also demonstrated the pride in creativity (look what I made!) and sense of community sharing that is pretty inspiring about our tech society. That is something we can facilitate in libraries: encouraging creation and sharing.
• Ask the people you serve what would make their lives easier.
• We are the library. We democratise information and expertise, and there is no more noble goal.
  

Information Decoration : Mobile Augmented Reality and Libraries with Fiacre O'Duinn

Yeah, this was a bit out of my comfort zone. Fiacre, you're out of my comfort zone! You hear that?

Seriously interesting stuff, though. Here are some snippets:

• Augmented reality = Combines real + virtual worlds, interactive, 3D
• Want to see where technology is going? Look at artists (no such thing as failure) and military (more $ than they know what to do with)
• Donteat.at - "Get a text message when you check into a NYC restaurant that is at risk of being closed for health code violations." Eg. your phone will vibrate and you will know to get out of there!
• Ground Crew: you walk by a community gardens, and your phone vibrates to ask you to water it. What could libraries be doing with this technology (which is already out there)?
• GeoLoqi: a way to securely share location data. Beyond that, you can actually send yourself a note for when you visit a particular location in the future.
• StreetMuseum: Museum of London iPhone app that shows you images of the place where you are standing throughout history.
  
• DIY version: Historypin and the rise of the "information flaneur," walking through information in order to experience it.
• The idea of "information decoration:" the manner in which information is made available is according to what people want. Focus on the information, not the technology. In fact, "good technology isn't experienced as technology at all, because it is meaningfully integrated."

Saying Yes: Building smart libraries by killing fear and getting the job done with Jenica P. Rogers

* some links and images from her talk (similar to a few of her other recent talks) are on her blog here.

Some quotes and paraphrases:

• "I love the work we do; I just don't love how we do it. We worry too much about offending everyone."
• "There has never been a time when libraries are not changing. We can't use 'things change' as an excuse to do nothing. This is it. This is our world."
• STOP the "collections arms race!" In fact, collection size is rapidly losing importance as a measure of a library's worth. "Traditional metrics fail to capture our value to our mission."

Where we stand:

• "Viable alternatives to the library now exist and boast fastest growth and easiest access."
• Demand for our traditional services is declining (now, here is where I would link back to reference questions from Sarah's talk.... I would love to see the two of them discuss this...)
• New patron demands stretch our budgets and our organisational culture.
• The future of our information economy is with Kickstarter and crowdsourcing. How will our patrons get access to that information?
  
• Stakeholder expectations are not keeping up with reality.
• "We're not acting; we're reacting. We are great crisis managers," but this can be a weakness, too. "We must move past this."
• "Technology or tools will not save us. They are only as good as the understanding and effort you put into them."
• It's time for librarians to examine their own fears and start paying attention. Examine the framework (stop focusing on the task work) and focus on advancing our values.
• Say yes. "What's the worst that could happen? And could I handle it if it happened? Not would I want to, but could I?"
  

Seen reading on OC Transpo

• Lots of dudes reading a variety of material: Your Successful Preschooler: Ten Skills Children Need to Become Confident and Socially Engaged by Ann E. Densmore and Margaret L. Bauman, something by V. C. Andrews, and Méditer au quotidien : Une pratique simple du bouddhisme by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana (the last of these three seen on Via Rail)
• speaking of trips, New York to Dallas by J. D. Robb
• Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
• Numerical Methods: Using MATLAB by George Lindfield and John Penny
  
• The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
  
• You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
• something by Henning Mankell
• Me: the May issue of Quill & Quire and Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick (

Je me souviens de l'ABQLA 2012

I have returned, with a medal for participating in Battle Decks at ABQLA 2012, but not with a winning medal. A tremendous participation medal it is, though, made from a dear friend's daughter's soccer meal, re-designed by the visionary puppet-master Lora, and executed by the ever-talented Westmount team.

You *can* go home again, but the past is a foreign country, to mix quotes. This week, I ate mashed potatoes with sour cream and cream cheese with my family, ate croissants and talked libraries and art with Ann, ate chicken with chapeaux and talked religion with my mum and Patricia, got my hair cut, transversed the mountain at least four times in a car and once on foot, ate polenta fries (and drank endless gimlets) and talked libraries and shake weights with Care, Shawn, Lora, Fiacre, and Meghan, and ate conference chicken with my Westmount family.

I ate a lot - did you pick up on that? And I ran only once, with The Husband, my hair whipped into a weird mess by the cold Lakeshore Drive wind.

The last ABQLA conference I attended was the 75th, at which I gave a swanky speech at the swanky dinner, speaking after Jack Rabinovitch and before Nicholas Hoare at the Ritz. This time, I was picked up and twirled around by Faith, hugged by former colleagues I miss desperately, pampered by my mum and my Westmount peeps, and reminded of all I love and all I do not love about my hometown and my first professional milieu. I saw so many old friends (from libraries all over the greater Montreal area, and from local vendor partners) and old enemies, and made some new friends (and a new enemy - that's right, F$ck-Acre: ABQLA 2013 knife fight ... IT'S ON). I felt free, and stifled; I was the conquering returning heroine, and the overprepared type-A personality Battle Decks competitor. Good thing your famil(ies) always love you, even when you eat all their food, drink four gimlii, desert them during a conference dinner for another table, embarrass yourself at Battle Decks, and then scurry back to Ottawa!

Montréal, je t'embrasse.

Quick update

It's the end of April! One month until the CLA Annual Conference, then my next OPLA RA meeting, and a trip to Kitchener!


I've been furiously doing battle with a broken elevator at work (and, one might argue, some broken souls), but I'm still alive (the elevator might not be).

Later today, I am driving back to Montreal, for a week's rest. I will be walking on the mountain with my former boss, having dinner with two women priests I admire greatly, hamming it up with Caroline and her slide whistle at the ABQLA conference, and spending hours reading (hopefully). On that last point, here's what's under my wing-back chair at home ('cause I am off work for, you know, 9 days. I have to have some back-ups):

Here are some Saturday treasures for you to digest with your coffee:

• A Letter to a New Branch Manager, by Tara Kressler - some sound advice here. #1 is absolutely crucial (I have heard other teams disparage new branch managers who didn't follow it) and #2 is probably my biggest take-away from the last two years of supervising. But oh hell no, I am not dressing up. So don't ask.
• I am off to Battle Decks. Everything in that bio is true. Watch out.

This list would be longer but my ride's here. PS I hate the new Blogger interface screwing up my fonts..... Laters!

Seen reading on OC Transpo

• Something by George. R. R. Martin (OPL Express Reads copy)
• Macleans magazine
• The Stars Shine Down by Sidney Sheldon
• What Is the What by Dave Eggers
• Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
• Reported by a friend: story time on the bus, featuring The Monster At The End Of This Book and There's A Wocket In My Pocket, followed by a song.
• Seen reading, STM segment: a book by Diana Gabaldon and The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.
• Me: I Do Not Think I Could Love a Human Being by Joanna Skibsrud, The Lady in the Looking Glass (Penguin Mini Modern Classic) by Virginia Woolf, and Brideshead Abbreviated by John Crace

Excerpts from the March monthly report at Carlingwood

Man, I'm tired. Am I getting old or something? I find now that sometimes Fridays, capped off with a glass of wine, find me asleep before 10 pm. Other than that sad fact, things are percolating along over here, with plans for the CLA Conference becoming more concrete, and weekends full of wonderful walks and runs around in the sun, observing some very early tulips.

Here are some things I (and my amazing colleagues) have been up to at work these days:

• We finished a gargantuan weeding and shifting project on the 2nd floor (adult non-fiction), making room for better homes for our Multilingual, language learning and graphica collections. In other building news (seriously, sometimes I think it's *all* building news... ain't nobody teaching this sh*t in library school!) we re-arranged elements of our lobby (based on some unfortunate customer feedback that turned into a happy story when I saw the amazing job my team did making improvements!), and I was finally able to realise my "accountability" vision of having a real conversation via the comment and suggestion box by installing a comment board (see at right). My plan may well come back and bite me though, as the comments have increased at least threefold since the board's installation. That's a lot of answering for me to do! I mean, hooray! Meanwhile, our building maintenance team was in fine form and framed and dry-walled our new 3rd floor shared office, prompting a musical chairs-style shuffle of the magazine shelving up there, and speculation about installing a jacuzzi.
  
• My tremendous Adult Information team led a “How to Use the Library's Digital Media Collection” program on the 2nd floor in front of the Adult Information Desk. Over the course of the afternoon (primarily from 2 pm – 4 pm) all four of us helped about 15 people with digital media questions. Despite the presence of our OPL Toybox at this event, featuring different eReaders customers could try out, the vast majority of the people we helped were 55+ and had brought their own eReaders and tablets so that we could help them set up their devices to download from our collection. The rest of the participants stopped by to ask more general questions about devices, compatibility, and what would work best for their needs. A quick tally indicates that we worked in-depth with customers setting up: 2 Blackberry Playbooks, 2 iPod Touch(es?), 1 Kobo Vox, 1 Sony PRS505, and 1 Sony PR650. We also had three general questions, one customer with an iPad at home who wanted a bit of a demo, and 2 with laptops or PCs at home who also wanted to walk through the set-up steps. I am immensely proud of my colleagues for handling a pretty crazy afternoon with grace, professionalism, creativity, and humour!
• 16 teens (and our own resident award-winning poet) created spine poetry for a poetry month display!

• We had 153 adults, 66 teens and 1282 children at our programs this month.
• I continued my ongoing meet-and-greets with local community partners. I was reading today in Vanity Fair about a movie director who meets with one person who is NOT in the entertainment business every two weeks: what an interesting goal. I might steal it. Anyway, I have been discussing potential future partnerships / common interests left, right and centre these days.... Not to mention I am shilling the planned Carlingwood Older Adults Advisory Committee to everyone. We are hoping to get that group off the ground in the fall.
  
• News EMC West wrote a piece on the Carlingwood Branch, prompting a childhood friend to stop by. Turns out she lives a few blocks away now. Small world!
• Stay tuned on April 16th for the announcement of the CLA Book of the Year for Children award winner, and some interesting cross-promotion between OPL and CLA this year.
• Bonus image above: our Titanic display was picked over by one enthusiastic child almost immediately, forcing P and I to get all silly with it, sticking up some seafood titles and speculating about Leo DiCaprio bios or books about swimming technique. Note new location of pillar displaying DVDs - great team suggestion!
  

Finality

Last books purchased by The Husband and I from the Nicholas Hoare shops in Montreal and Ottawa.

Seen reading on OC Transpo

Just outside, the river churns...

• Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
  
• Room by Emma Donoghue
• Something by or about L. M. Montgomery in Polish
  
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  
• National Geographic Traveler
  
• Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
  
• The Abduction by John Grisham
  
• Catching Fire (on an iPad)
• The Quran
• Me: the latest issue of Feliciter and Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg
  

Read recently: One-minute reviews

• Paul au parc by Michel Rabagliati - Like all the Paul books, filled with nostalgia and a love of the simple things in life (in this case, camp friends, sleeping outdoors, family bickering, and first love). This one, about Paul's experience in Boy Scouts in Montreal during the FLQ crisis, has some unexpected trauma three-quarters of the way through. Dear Drawn and Quarterly, Hurry up with translations!
  
• Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif - Speaking of trauma.... I almost had to put this down (the trauma is right at the end, but the characters were beginning to drive me a bit around the bend mid-way through). Nonetheless, this is an interesting exploration of contemorary Pakistani culture, albeit through the lens of the Christian minority.
  
• The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen - Family mourns the death of a baby; secrets hiding all over the place. Older half-sister shows up and shakes the boat. For readers who enjoy Joyce Carol Oates, Kim Edwards (ha! See below), or Julia Glass.
  
• Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch - I am just going to plain stop referring to this book by its North American title, Midnight Riot, which is not descriptive at all and panders to allegedly simple-minded Americans. So there. Imagine an adult Harry Potter: young Peter, of a mixed background and raised on the mean streets of London by a lovingly normal family, joins the Filth and is assigned to a secret department charged with magic law enforcement.
  
• The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst - Yes, I am late to the game reading this. I somehow thought I wouldn't like it, but I LOVED it. It made me yearn to sit my uncle down and ask him about his school days. It also totally made me collect all of these pics into an album. Anyway, this multi-generational saga loosely follows the middle-class Sawles and upper-class Valence families throughout the 20th century, starting with a love triangle between George Sawles, his sister Daphne, and the fictional WW1 poet Cecil Valence. Very Brideshead, but also has similarities to The Children's Book by Byatt.
  
• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes - Unreliable memory, 101: The school days edition. Tony Webster looks back on his schoolfriends, including the enigmatic Adrian Finn, who became involved with Tony's girlfriend and then killed himself. Does Tony have the full story? Is he capable of seeing beyond his own perspective? Sort of atmospheric like The Portrait by Iain Pears, only with less tension - in a good way.
  
• The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards - Alex is late to the game, part 2. Woman's husband, a doctor, delivers his own twins in a snowstorm in mid-century America. When one of the babies is discovered to have Downs Syndrome, the husband tells his wife the child has died and sends it away. The repurcutions of this secret are felt throughout the family's life, and the lives of those complicit in the act. Dramatic, character-driven.
  
• A World Elsewhere by Wayne Johnston - Oddly likeable story of university friends separated by geography (America / Newfoundland) and social status (filthy rich / destitute and estranged from family) who re-connect over their two children, neither father being the biological parent of the one in their care. This sounds like a backwards way to describe this book, for those who have read it, but it's oddly what sticked with me. That, and the theme of control: control over others, and control over an environment.
  
• Touch by Alexi Zentner - Weird. That is all. If you like your magic realism set in freezing cold Northern Ontario, go for it!
  
• Currently reading: The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood - so far, also a latter-day Brideshead Revisited. Delish.
  

For sale: fresh news, never read

• Interesting Meg Wolitzer article: "The Second Shelf: On the Rules of Literary Fiction for Men and Women"
  "If The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, had been written by a woman yet still had the same title and wedding ring on its cover, would it have received a great deal of serious literary attention? Or would this novel (which I loved) have been relegated to “Women’s Fiction,” that close-quartered lower shelf where books emphasizing relationships and the interior lives of women are often relegated?"
• A film version of Zadie Smith's On Beauty is in the works
• I was getting all enthusiastic about this recap of a meeting in England until I read this: "it seemed like all the participants, with the possible exception of Ciara Eastell of Devon, did not really have their heart in this one and saw the delivery of books as, well, tedious and somewhat old-fashioned. This was summed up by one panel member who said "we're going to get savvier than offering just books." A saying about babies and bathwater comes to mind.... Also, the definition of what a librarian should do needs to change, and this should come from educational institutions as much as from culture: "We're no longer recruiting librarians, just people working in libraries. We recruit youth workers, events managers, experts in partnership relations and in commercial opportunities. These are core skills for running a library now, not "librarian" as such. We're looking to 'broker relationship.'" Well, yes, but.... Nonetheless, some great ideas here. I especially love the one about not needing librarians to train volunteers, but that could just be me....!