Checking In With Paula

Our Administrative Assistant Paula , who you may remember from Halloween, always keeps things interesting here at the library. Just yesterday she spun a hilarious yarn about her drive to work that had the whole circulation staff rolling on the floor. (The punchline was, "He sure was a lucky son of a buck!)

Starting today, we will periodically be checking in to see whats going on in her part of the world.

She recently moved to her brand new office (pictures of all the new offices coming soon, when everyone is unpacked) and the first thing she did was set up some of her Christmas decorations to get the staff properly instilled with Christmas spirit. Currently her office sports not one...

...but two ethnic Santas.

Paula has Christmas spirit, that's for sure. We'll be sure to check back in when she unloads the 10 or so more boxes of Christmas decorations she keeps in her garage.

Word Woman

Welcome to another brain-stimulating installment of Word Woman's Weekly Workout! Lifelong learning is the best way to fight memory loss associated with aging, so let's work some flab off that vocab with the word of the week:

Bloviate: [verb] to talk loudly or aggressively. A term with its origins in mid-nineteenth century US slang, possibly related to railroading culture. Literally, it means "to blow off steam". -- "Cassell's Dictionary of Slang", Jonathon Green, Cassell & Co., 1998


Example: Some people feel the need to bloviate, particularly when confronted by telemarketing calls during the dinner hour.


Extra Credit: Many people over the years have questioned the use of the term "macaroni" in that quintessential American song "Yankee Doodle". According to the source referenced above, the term originates in the late 18th-early 19th century and refers to a fop or a dandy whose travels are evidenced by his taste for foreign foods (thus the word "macaroni").

Word Woman

Welcome to another super installment of Word Woman's Weekly Workout! Crossword puzzles, cryptoquotes and Sudoku are all great ways to keep your brain in shape, and so is learning new words. It's time to limber up those neural pathways with the word of the week:



Malpais: Lava-bed country, or more generally, badlands. From the original French meaning "bad country" or land that is bad to travel through. -- "Dictionary of the American West", Winifred Blevins, Facts on File, Inc., 1993


Example: The recent heavy snows in the Missoula have made the valley somewhat of a malpais for travelers heading out for the holidays.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We'll be closed Tomorrow and Friday to celebrate. See you all on Saturday. Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Word Woman

Welcome to Word Woman's Weekly Workout! Training your brain isn't just for students - education is meant to last a lifetime. So get ready to expand your vocabulary with another great word of the week:

Compassion fatigue: A temporarily indifferent or unsympathetic attitude toward others' suffering as a result of overexposure to charitable appeals. -- "The Oxford Dictionary of New Words", Sara Tulloch, ed., Oxford University Press, 1991

It is difficult to make it through the holiday season without developing a case of compassion fatigue from the multitude of causes placing demands on your spare change and time.

And the National Book Award Goes to...

You may have heard of Sherman Alexie. Or you may have heard of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a PEN/Hemingway Award winner. But did you know that Sherman Alexie is a local celebrity? He was just awarded the National Book Award for young people's literature for his first young adult and semi-autobiographical book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane. The Absolutely True Diary... is an autobiographical story of a 14-year-old Spokane Indian who leaves his poverty-stricken reservation school and moves to a wealthy, all-white school.

As Debbie Reese mentions in her blog, you can also read about these tribes on the Internet. They produce their own websites, unfiltered through the eyes of an outsider. That is always the best way to get accurate, respectful, and authentic information about individual tribes. Read and enjoy!

Ask a Montana librarian

Do you have a burning question that needs answered, but don't have the time or desire to visit the library? Try out Ask a Montana Librarian. Here you can get expert answers to your questions without stepping foot in the library. There are three different options to choose from: 1) Participate in a live internet chat with a trained reference librarian, 2) Submit a question through email, or 3) Telephone in or fax us your question.

The MLN Cooperative Reference Project pools nationwide libraries' reference skills providing users with round-the-clock reference services. Please be aware that in many cases you will not be talking to a local librarian. They are part of a nationwide cooperative, so the librarian you work with will probably not be at your local library and will not have access to your personal library card information. For more information, please contact MPL's reference desk at (406) 721-BOOK.

Sneaking A Peak (Literally) at the Construction

You saw the plastic come down yesterday, now we have doors and more painted walls. We can also be sure the new rooms are protected as the folks working in circulation this morning had to endure a half hour of alarm testing for the new rooms. We were subjected to three different types of alarms, which ranged in time from seconds to 10 minutes or so. It woke me up at least. Check out the progress for yourself.

And before I'm taken to task by the spelling police, I've quite literally sneaked a peak into one of the pictures. So there!

Word Woman

Welcome to Word Woman’s weekly workout! Everyone knows how important it is to keep in shape as you walk down the road of life, but it's not just your body that needs exercise. Studies have shown that intellectual stimulation is best way to protect your brain from the effects of cognitive decline and memory loss due to aging. And since it’s never too early to start stretching your vocabulary, let’s work that gray matter with the word of the week:

aginate: [adj-uh-nate] to sell small things. The noun aginator would be a nice term for an online auction seller. From a Latin word for part of a scale. ["More Weird and Wonderful Words", Erin McKean, ed., Oxford University Press, 2003]

Example: "Some enterprising aginators on E-Bay can keep themselves supplied with pocket money for months just by selling odds and ends from the attic as memorabilia."

Something new from the reference department

You'll be seeing something new when you browse through the adult non-fiction materials. Reference books identified by a bright green sticker that says Library Use Only will mark books that we would like folks to know that we have on the subject that they are looking for even if they cannot take it out of the building. We, of course, have lots of other great books and reference tools back at reference still but now there is a little taste of what we have to whet the appetite.

Also... you may have noticed previous blogs about our new offices going up in this area. Well, today the plastic came down! What a difference this makes for us; we can actually see out of the windows again. The fact that this is just the first step of many that we will be taking this year as the library continues its redesign process makes it very exciting. Okay, so I'm easily excited.

Anyway, here's a photo of the newly unveiled area. I asked the builder if we shouldn't have a ribbon cutting or a brass band playing but he said that they had trim work yet to do so he wasn't ready for any brass bands just yet.

Look

for

more

to

come

and

stop

by

and

say

hi.

Dolley Madison Stops in For Tea

A large group was treated to tea and a quick history lesson today in the large meeting room when Dolley Madison stopped by the library. It was a great program and the room was filled close to capacity to hear about the former first lady of the nation.

Along with the presentation, spectators were treated to free tea and other treats. It is always nice to have a good turnout to a history presentation.

A New Way to Pay

(Well, not all that new.)
The Missoula Public Library will now accept your bank cards and credit cards as a form of payment. Now you can eliminate those pesky fines even when you don't have the scratch and you forgot your checkbook.

(photo by Ben)

And if you still want to write a check or pay with good ol' cash money, we won't give you the run-around à la those commercials that claim you're bringing the entire world to a screeching halt when you dare to pay with anything other than a credit card.
Thanks for your patience as the staff gets used to working this newfangled doo-hickey contraption-a-ma-gadget.