It has been my experience that a number of public library Directors belong to Rotary Clubs or other service clubs in their community. It's a convenient way to reach out and make the library part of the community in a different way.

I have learned over the years that local Rotary Clubs annually donate money to scholarships for college students, to community agencies and local projects. They send grad students abroad for study and bring Rotarians from different parts of the world to their community to strenghthen international understanding. And they contribute in both money and time to attack worldwide issues like eradicating polio and bringing pure water to people who lack it.

Here in Nashua we are fortunate to have two Rotary Clubs. The one I belong to, Nashua West, holds a three day barbeque festival each year to raise money. This mega-event is held on the grounds of the Anheuser Busch plant in Merrmack and includes a dozen or more professional barbequers selling their wares, fun activities and rides for the youngsters, professional musicians performing from a big stage and people eating a lot of brisket, pulled pork, ice cream and soda pop. Crowds can range up into the tens of thousands in that one weekend.

Amateur BBQers come from all over the eastern US to compete for the title of New Hampshire State Barbeque Champion. They often have some of what they prepared for the contest available for spectaters to sample. The Governor will be there this year along with many military families who are being especially honored.

The RibFest is scheduled for the weekend of June 22, 23 and 24. Despite the huge tents, the event is very weather dependent so make an offering to the weather gods for a pleasant weekend. With the proceeds the Club will support dozens of local agencies, including the Museum Pass program at the public library. Plan to stop by and have some of the best BBQ you will ever taste north of the Mason Dixon line!

Ms. Susan Deschenes will join our team as the new Assistant Director/Systems Administrator on Monday June 4. I hope you will make it a point to welcome her to the Nashua Public Library.

But this is not the first time Susan has worked here. Susan, a Nashua native, found her very first job at the Nashua Public Library as a Page putting books away during her high school years. An older sister and a younger sister also held similar positions at the library.

After graduating from the University of Rochester with a degree in Economics, Susan worked for Digital Equipment Corporation. She acquired a Masters Degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons College in Boston and went to work for the Derry Public Library. Then she was appointed the Automation Librarian at the Manchester City Library about nine years ago.

Susan will assist me with avariety of general management duties and serve as our point person for automation, networks, computers and web presence. It's a big job but she's avery talented professional and the Nashua Public Library is lucky to have her joining the rest of this great staff.

Sarah Miller wrote, in the above titled article in the Los Angeles Times and reprinted in the Nashua Telegraph, "Call me a snob or call me old-fashioned, but I think there should be one institution where, on entering, people are forced - horror of horrors - to be quiet. For once."

When the Nashua Public Library opened in 1970, during the era of "open concept designs", a period when, I believe, architects as a group lost their minds, individually and collectively, even the Children's Room was not separated by a wall of any kind from the rest of the library. The noise was unbelievable. The complaintes were constant. I know. I was here. A year or so after opening the glass wall and doors were added to separate one area from the other.

But there were, and still are today, no truly separate quiet study rooms where an individual or small group could go to study in real silence. The front lobby was designed like the end of a trumpet horn so that all noise from the lobby could be heard throughout the rest of the first floor.

As library staff in the 1970's we were instructed to tell people that the library was so noisy because a library was a busy place where noisy exchanges of information were constantly taking place. OK, possibly, in part that's true.

But when I was young, right after the Civil War as my daughter always adds when I start a sentence like this, we were taught to be very quiet in the small branch library next door to the house where I grew up. It was a rule. We were there to study or read or, later in high school, to look for girls. All matters that required real silence in those days! But we also developed a tremendous respect for the place, in part, because we had to act differently there.

And no one would have dared to have a noisy cell phone conversation in the library if we had had such devices then. Recently, I was in a nearby public library for a meeting and, when I took out my phone to make a call just before the meeting started, I was politely told that cell phone use was prohibited in the library. It took me a moment to adjust and then I thought, "Good for You".

When I see men wandering, glassy-eyed through the bread aisle at the supermarket, phone clutched desperately to ear, I think, "Just buy a loaf, man, take a chance. How wrong could you be? It's only bread".

Maybe we really have lost the ability to be quiet. Anywhere.

Recently, my wife Martha and I made the long journey to Hawaii to celebrate her health and my age, turning 60. What a beautiful, lush, exotic and remarkable state. We had fun snorkling, swimming, beach combing, hiking, antiquing, dining out and just looking at all the spectacular scenery.

I also took a look at two public libraries, one in Princeville on the island of Kuaii and one in Hawi on the island of Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, all local public library services appear to be delivered by a statewide library system. This provides, I would imagine, for terrific economies of scale and efficiencies with staff.

Both libraries I looked at were physically very different facilities and, no doubt, specialized to meet local needs. But just the idea of a statewide public library system is so foreign and interesting to those of us who have always worked in libraries in New England where each municipality is so parochial about town or city services.

I wonder if the services are significantly enhanced and if the costs are really lower in such an approach. It would be interesting to see a professional article that answered some of these questions on the topic.

In recent years, the Nashua Public Library has made several very dramatic changes to its operations in response to the financial restraints of the City.

We discontinued the bookmobile, which had served the City for fifty years, and replaced that service with an outreach van aimed at the elderly and pre-schoolers. The outreach van is reaching more people and distributing more books than the bookmobile was toward the end. And we laid off one full time staff member and transfered another as a result. We also didn't have to spend approximately $150,000 for a new bookmobile.

We closed the Chandler Memorial Branch Library which was too close to the Main Library to serve as an effective branch. We reduced staff by three part-timers and a custodian in making those arrangements

This year we also reduced the number of Pages putting books away from ten to six. We open half an hour later each morning so regular staff can help get the books on the shelves.

Level funded and reduced library budgets have meant we have had to find hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past five years in the library budget to continue doing what the citizens of Nashua require of the library. And our 50 member staff has been reduced by ten while our circulation of materials to Nashuans has more than doubled.

We think the library is a lean, efficient and effective public service. What do you think?

Lots of people in Nashua have been reading "Zorro" by Isabel Allende, our One City, One Book title for this year. And many of those folks have been attending interesting programs at the library discussing the book, watching fencing demonstrations and learning what life was like in Spain during the time of Zorro.

So don't be left out. We still have copies available at the library and one program remaining: on Sunday, April 15 at 2 pm we will be showing the silent film "The Mark of Zorro" in the NPL Theater accompanied by live piano music especially composed and performed for us by Richard Hughes. Please plan on joining us for this very special treat.

For some time now many mid-sized libraries like ours have recognized that they play an important role in their communities as popular materials libraries. That primary role involves making sure we have a good selection of the most popular books, magazines, books-on-tape, movies, music and other items that might be of general interest to our customers.

Then, secondarily, we need to have material that supports our kids in school, preschoolers learning to read and love books, lifelong learning materials for adults out of school and information on issues of the day that help us to be better citizens. We try to have some items that help us to do better at work and get ahead on the job, fix things at home, understand the world around us and enjoy a life of fulfillment..

A lot of libraries, in developing strategic or long range plans, used a brief manual from the Public Library Association that helped to clarify what kind of library their community wanted. The Public Library Association group is now revising that manual. Below I have listed what they are now calling "Proposed Service Responses". In using this new guide, we will have to determine if a service is wanted in our library and the priority to give to it. Want to help?

Let me know which of these services you think are vital to the Nashua Public Library and in what priority and I'll let you all know the results.

The Service Responses...
Be Informed Citizens: Local, National and World Affairs
Build Successful Enterprises: Business and Nonprofit Support
Connect to the Online World: Public Internet Access
Create Young Readers: Emergent Literacy
Discover Your Heritage: Genealogy and Local History
Express Creativity: Create and Share Content
Explore Our Community: Community Resources and Services
Get Fast Facts: Ready Reference
Learn to Find, Evaluate and Use Information: Information Literacy
Learn to Read and Write: Adult and Family Literacy
Make Career Choices: Job and Career Development
Make Informed Decisions: Health, Wealth and Other LIfe Choice
Satisfy Curiosity: LIfelong Learning
Stimulate Imagination: Reading, Viewing and Listening for Pleasure
Succeed in School: Homework Help
Visit a Comfortable Place: Public and Virtual Spaces
Welcome to America: Services for New Immigrants

I read about a library that was offering a successful story hour program for fathers and children called "Daddy & Me". This was interesting to me because we traditionally have fewer dads than moms at story hour programs for a bunch of reasons. This particular library program was on Saturday mornings and included coffee and donuts!

I recommended it to our Children's department staff. Then I began to read other librarian's reactions to "Daddy & Me". What happens, a midwestern librarian asked, to all the children who don't have daddies? I assumed this meant that those children didn't have fathers who, for one reason or another, were available to the children to attend story hour, not that they literally didn't have daddies. That wouldn't be possible, would it?

Other librarians were soon asking if a step father could attend. How about a male friend of the mother's? Some librarians demanded to know if other story hours were called "Mommy & Me" and included healthy drinks and snacks!

I wondered if this was a case of thinking too deeply about something simple. Some scholarly studies I've read suggest that women read to children more frequently than men. Some of these studies seem to indicate an additional benefit to men reading to children over and above what benefit they get from women reading to them but this may stem from the novelty of it all. In any case, some service clubs arrange for their members, predominently men, to read to children in school classes that they "adopt" and those schools do better on standardized tests when compared to "non-adopted" schools.

Should librarians attempt to find ways to involve more men in reading to and with their children? An, if so, is a daddy and me type story hour a reasonable approach to take? What do you think?

Recently, one of the lists on the Internet that public librarians often read has been discussing how different individuals feel about being addressed by terms (terms of endearment?) such as sweetie, honey, dear, et al. These terms have been known to sometimes come up in conversation between librarians and library patrons.

In this context tone of voice may be a key. Is the customer older? Might the expression be a habit from the past that was never broken? What might it imply, if anything at all, when a customer ends a discussion with a younger staff member by saying something like, "Thanks, honey". Is that demeaning to a professional? Should anyone care?

I was raised to refer to any adult I had not been introduced to as "sir" or "ma'am". Some people, I gather from reading the PUBLIB Listserve, do not care for those terms either. As a young man, if I didn't address a gentleman as "sir" and/or a lady as "ma'am" my mother would have whacked me in the back of the head. I'm just showing my age, I guess, but it's a tough habit to break!

Another thing my mother did mention when I was young was never to worry about what someone called me, just make sure they called me to supper! So I tend not to be particularly sensitive about these terms that some people seem to use as shortcuts for what they really meant to say. I also tend to use some of these terms myself. I have been known to greet a group of library staff in the break room with, "Good morning, kids" or "punks" or "fellow Americans"! Even when I know everyones name.

I have learned, however, that some folks don't care for this type of joking and I have become, I hope, more sensitive to this over the years. If a Reference Librarians does not care to be referred to as "Chief: by a customer, she needed be and she should say something at once.

I remember calling an acquantence named James "Jimmy". He stopped me and objected by saying, "I wouldn't call you Joey". I didn't mention that everyone who knew me best already did call me that. I simply apologized and forever after called him Jim as he preferred.

You are entitled to your name and forms of address. If someone refers to you, even with the best of intentions, in a way you object to, simply say so.

The recent order from the Probate Court formalizes the tentative settlement reached earlier by all the parties and means the Trustees are able to sell the building, under certain conditions, and use the proceeds from that sale to finally build-out and finish the East Wing of the Main Library.

The Chandler building, which is too close to the Main Library to efficiently serve as a branch library, was closed in July 2006 due to budget constraints at the library.

Now the Trustees will seek qualified bidders to buy the property and maintain it as the signature building it has been for so many years on Nashua's Main Street. The proceeds will be used to create finished space in the Main Library for meetings, local history and genealogy collections, quiet study and much more.

Mabel Chandler, the original donor, will continue to be recognized for her home on Main Street and at the new wing of the Main Library. All the parties concerned with the Chandler building thought this approach was a win/win for the citizens of Nashua and Mabel Chandler's legacy. We hope you will agree.