Altered Books!

Wow, what a turnout! Eighty people showed up at the library last night to peruse the entries for our Altered Books contest as part of First Friday. We're anxiously awaiting the tallying of the votes to find out who won in each of the categories. There were so many great creations, I just couldn't pick a favorite, so I had to abstain from voting. Here are some pictures that Joyce took at the event:





























As popular as it was, we're considering doing it again as part of the Festival of the Book.
Let us know if the idea appeals to you.

Word Woman

Welcome to another innovative installment of Word Woman's Weekly Work-Out! Tonight is a very exciting night at the library, because this will be our premiere display in conjunction with First Friday. My co-worker and fellow blogger, Ben, has posted some great pictures and further information on this event in the last few weeks. Just scroll down and take a look for yourself. We will be showing off our Altered Books in the Large Meeting Room, so if you find yourself downtown tonight, stop in and enjoy our bookish creations! Now, let's get going with the Word of the Week:

Garrulous (gehr-uh-luhs) - excessively loquacious; talking about trivial matters; wordy. -- "The New York Times Everyday Reader's Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, Mispronounced Words", Laurence Urdang, Ed., Weathervane Books, 1972.

Example: There are some who accuse Word Woman of being garrulous, but really it is just her love of words speaking.

Reading Lights and Newspapers

As part of our ongoing renovation we're getting our "Reading Room" ready for action. The idea is to give patrons a comfortable, relaxed area where they can sit back in a nice comfy chair and read while they're in the library.

We just finished the first stage, adding some nice warm bright lights - because reading under fluorescent lighting for any period of time isn't the most pleasant experience ever.

We also added some new newspaper racks to make way for more chairs with more cushions along with a couple of end tables. You can see the old newspaper rack in the background of the picture and the new, vertical ones in the foreground. It really opens up the space.

Coming up next - comfy chairs! Stay tuned.

Osprey Invasion!

Today the library was filled with baseball players, baseball fans, beauty queens and large diurnal, fish-eating, birds of prey. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game,"we invited members of the Missoula Osprey to come down to the library for a meet and greet. Ollie Osprey and Miss Teen Montana joined in the fun.

We handed out hot dogs, peanuts and cracker jacks to 50 plus people and sang the song we were there to honor. We also created some librarian trading cards to hand out - which you can see right here. After some autograph signing and photo ops, the players helped Linette, our teen librarian, read some Spanish language stories about baseball to the children in attendance.

Then, Ollie headed upstairs to meet with our staff, and get his very own library card!



Success! I wonder what he checked out? Maybe Winged Migration?

Now That's a Bookmobile!

Our very own maintenance guru Rob took the concept of altering a book to a whole new level. He didn't just alter a book, he altered a whole lot of books and made a cool "bookmobile."

The more you look at it, the more books you can see that he used.

He even used old discarded cassette tapes for the pedals.

The wheels are actually books!

If you want to check out the bookmobile in person, be sure to stop by the library on August 1st for our very first First Friday event. There's also time to get your own altered books into the show, just have them down at the library by 6 pm on said Friday. Tell your friends!