Word Woman

Welcome to another mind-bending episode of Word Woman's Weekly Work-Out! It's time to stretch those synapses with the Word of the Week. This week it's a Blue Light Special -- two words for the price of one:

Eponym: A person whose name has become identified with a particular object or activity.


Gerrymander: Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814) was a vice-president of the United States (1813-1814) and one of the 56 men who had signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. His name is remembered today, however, for another reason. Gerry was born in Massachusetts and became governor of the state in 1810. It was during his second term of office that Gerry resorted to the device of rearranging the electoral boundaries in favor of his own party. This was not by any means a new practice, neither was it illegal; but on this occasion, the re-drawn map of a particular district happened to catch the observant eye of the famous portrait painter Gilbert Charles Stuart who was amused to notice that the outline of the district was similar to that of a salamander. He pointed out this novelty to a newspaper editor, who thought that a better description would be gerrymander - and a new word was coined. -- "A Dictionary of Eponyms", Cyril Leslie Beeching, Library Association Publishing Ltd., 1989.


Example: The senator's gerrymandering assured the passage of his bill, but made his name eponymous with corruption on Capitol Hill.

Word Woman

Welcome to another exciting episode of Word Woman! It's time to train your brain with another awesome Word of the Week. Continuing with the theme of election year 2008, here is another political offering:


Front porcher: (noun) [Cf. S.E. front-porch campaign, in Safire New Lang. Pol., P.156] a political candidate who is reluctant to campaign widely. -- "Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang", Grant Barrett, ed., Oxford University Press, 2004.


Example: There are those who claim that Fred Thompson's recent decision to drop out of the presidential race is due to his being a front porcher.

Frenchtown Branch Grand Opening

Last night we opened up the Frenchtown branch of the Missoula Public Library. Well, it has been open for a week now, but we held a grand opening celebration. Our branch librarian is Heather Tone, who has worked at the main branch for a little while and has worked really hard at getting some books out to Frenchtown and getting everything else sorted out. Here she is waiting to speak.



We also heard speeches from the school librarians and Neal Leathers, who is the chair of the Board of Trustees here at the library. Greg Pape, the Montana Poet Laureate, also read a few of his works. Then we moved upstairs to the library itself and held a ribbon cutting ceremony to make everything official. We seem to really love ribbon cutting ceremonies here lately..



And the people just poured in. We had somewhere near 80 people in attendance and gave out all kinds of door prizes and registered lots of new cards. It was pretty wild for a while.



This is my favorite picture from the night of a mother reading to her child at the library. Now people who live out toward Frenchtown won't have to drive all the way downtown to spend time reading to their kids at the library!

Word Woman

Welcome to another weird and wonderful edition of Word Woman's Weekly Work-Out! Now is the time to keep your brain in gear and start the new year out right by learning something new with the Word of the Week:

Sapid: (adjective) tasty; savory; palatable. -- "The New York Times Everyday Reader's Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, Mispronounced Words", Laurence Urdang, ed., New York Times Book Company, 1972.

Not to be confused with:

Vapid: (adjective) insipid; dull; lifeless. -- [ibid]

Example: The restaurant critic declared that the food at the new Italian place on 17th Street was sapid, as opposed to the decor, which was vapid.

Missoula Public Library Presents:

Frenchtown Branch Grand Opening

Please join us in celebrating our new branch at the Frenchtown High School Library:

Tuesday, January 22,
7 p.m.

Frenchtown High School
17620 Frontage Road

Meet library staff, browse the new Branch collection, enter to win fun door prizes, and more!

The Grand Opening Celebration is sponsored by Missoula Public Library and Friends of Missoula Public Library. Please call 721-BOOK for additional information or visit www.missoulapubliclibrary.org.

Construction Action

The kids department was awash in activity today as we began to shift our shelving units 18 inches. Sounds pretty easy, but believe me, it's not. All the books have to be shifted to an empty shelf, and the units have to be dismantled and unbolted from the floor. Plus They're really heavy. But, like Nicolas Cage says in Con Air, "Many hands make light work, my daddy taught me that." We're not quite halfway done, but progress is being made, special thanks to our maintenance guy Rob for doing the bulk of the work.

The new kids entrance also saw some improvements as details began to emerge. Its always strange to come to work and see things that have happened overnight, almost as if the gnomes themselves were building it.



And speaking of the gnomes, the staff was treated to a message from the builders explaining their view about how the entrance will turn out. Viva los Gnomos!

Construction Update

If you've been into the library in the last week or so, you may have noticed some unusual goings-on in the children's department. The children's non-fiction books aren't quite where they used to be, it seems like something is missing, and it definitely feels like there's something new.

That's because we are building a gnome-house-inspired entryway to the children's department! This is just the beginning of some of the changes that will be coming. You may remember that our Director and Administrative Assistant got new offices a couple months ago. Next on the docket are the children's and young adult sections, with the entryway getting the ball rolling.

To make room for the entryway, we had to move one of the non-fiction shelves to the other side of the range of shelves, which is why all the books don't seem to be in quite the same place.

This sketch to the right is an idea of what the entryway will look like when it's all finished. Something is being changed or added every day, so come in and check it out.

Brand New Logo!

The Missoula Public Library has a pair of brand new logos designed by one of my good friends Richard Hofmeier. Thanks Richard!

We'll use the big logo for things like book bags and the small logo will be used on our letterhead and advertisements. We're just rolling it out, so get used to it, soon it will be everywhere.

Word Woman

Welcome to another synapse-sizzling episode of Word Woman's Weekly Workout! Keep your brain firing on all four cylinders with the Word of the Week. In recognition of the fact that 2008 is an election year, here is a bit of political terminology:

Boondoggle: [noun] (claimed to have been coined as a name for an ornamental leather cord) an extravagant and useless project. According to the New York Times, "boondoggle" is simply a term applied back in the pioneer days to what we call gadgets today. -- "Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang", Grant Barrett, ed., Oxford University Press, 2004.

Example: The construction of a Rube Goldberg device - a complex series of mechanisms which must be set up and timed to go off precisely in sequence in order to accomplish a task which could much more easily be done by hand - could accurately be considered a boondoggle.

The Bookworm Alliance

I just read a great article on reading at NewWest.net, a great local blog, entitled Bookworms Unite! It was a good read and struck pretty close to home for me and most of my co-workers, although I'm not sure if any of us keep a spreadsheet of what we've read, although that would make a good new year's resolution. I didn't read close to a book a week, maybe 2 a month, but I bet I started one a week, does that count?

I would make the addition that as well as supporting local bookstores, come on down to the library when you're short a few bucks and pick up the same books for free!

Check out the article here

New Stuff for the New Year

After the inevitable neglect I gave the blog over the holidays, I'm back.

Today, we launched a brand new review page on our website entitled, "We Have It!" This page will offer reviews of books, magazines, films, and anything else you can think of, along with the capability for you to leave comments about the reviews. Did you read the same book and think it was horrible? Let us know.

Click here to check it out.

On a personal note, this page made me flex my programming muscle a little bit as I experimented with CSS and Javascript functions I'd never delved into before. It was a great learning experience.

And on another, even more personal note, my fellow co-worker and blogger Mitch is an expectant father, so the library threw him and his wife a surprise baby shower last night. This was my first baby shower, and the first of most of the guys in attendance. Here's Mitch opening my present, a baby toupee! (Nice picture Paulette!)

Word Woman

Welcome to Word Woman's Weekly Work-Out! Keep your brain in gear by learning new words all year. Let's get the year started by learning something new about a word that's familiar to you:

Nice: Nice has undergone a complete change in meaning since it came into English late in the 13th century. Deriving from the Latin nescius, "ignorant", nice originally meant "foolish or simple-minded", and came to mean "wanton or ill-mannered" before another century had passed. By the early 1400s, nice was being used for "extravagant dress", but before the century was out "extravagant dress" (as is so often the case in the world of fashion) had changed to "fashionable dress" and by Shakespeare's time nice meant "fastidious and refined". It took another 100 years or so before "refined" yielded to "agreeably delightful", this definition first recorded in 1769. -- "The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins", Robert Hendrickson, Checkmark Books, 1997.


Isn't it nice to learn something new about a word you thought you knew?