Adventures in Libraryland: Days Three, Four, and Five

Lori and T. at the branch--SJS 7.20.09

This is a photo of me and one of my favorite people in libraryland. T. is a friend and fellow manager and has traveled this journey with me so far. She's terrific.

It's been an interesting week in the new libraryland. People are so happy about the remodeled digs. Staff had the same reaction when it was first viewed it too. That's fun to watch.

It's wonderful to see children running across the field to visit us at the library. It's wonderful to reunite with patrons we haven't seen in 8+ months. All of the peaceful, positive energy in the branch is great. People caught on that we were open Tuesday afternoon and then we were discovered. So we hit the ground running. The soft opening was no longer soft. But for the most part it was smooth. Not too many casualties, just an incident involving a bloody nose in the girl's bathroom and out in the library. Yikes! We took care of the young patron, slapped on the latex gloves with disinfectant and put paper over the stains on the carpet in the library. We called maintenance right away to save the carpeting in the library proper. Who knew guarding blood stains on carpeting (so people wouldn't step on them) would be listed under "other duties as assigned?" Maintenance and IT staff have been visiting all week to tweak the facilites and equipment and assist the staff in whatever way possible. I am proud to say I only had one stress cry this week on Day 4 (moody Thursday) when I experienced my second consecutive sleepless night and the deams I experienced were about the library. The endless cash register tape dream was especially disconcerting. I could not comprehend the coin-ops and did not do something correctly on the cash register. Luckily, it was before we opened and I was behind the scenes at the time. I usually refer to the week of our festival as "retrohell". Add dedication and a soft opening and I have to say we're grateful we all have survived up to this point. And we did a good job. And people are happy. And that's the bottom line. Tonight I am preparing the speeches for tomorrow's ceremonies. I thought I would post a blog to warm up. Then off to a good night's dream.