One of our first falcon chicks has hatched! Watch live.
August 30, 2018
Today we shall engage in a little bit of edification for the masses. Poetry! It’s not April, but who says we have to relegate verses to that month alone? Today’s piece comes from the Ogden Nash collection Parents Keep Out, Elderly Poems for Youngerly Readers circa 1933 (it’s out of print but you can order […]
August 16, 2018
Each year the Evanston Public Library produces a killer list of the 101 children’s books that really struck us as the best of the best of the best. Now the number “101” may sound large to you. Allow me to assure you that it is not. It is a miniscule number. A teeny tiny digit. […]
July 6, 2018
Here at the library we have a new addition and you can see it anytime you like. Just drive down Church Street and pull into the alleyway just after Orrington. On your left, on the East side of the library, you’ll see a big green bin. It kind of looks like a drop box for […]
June 20, 2018
It’s that time of year again. That time when the Travel section of the library starts to look a little picked over. When I took over the Travel books three years or so ago I immediately weeded out everything that was more than 3 years old. That just makes good clean sense. The last thing […]
May 11, 2018
I have a toy. A fun toy. A toy that gives my little librarian heart a hop, skip, and a jump whenever I get to use it. The name of my toy? Collection HQ. It’s a program that allows me to see exactly how well the books in my library do or do not do […]
April 26, 2018
So here’s my #1 frustration with working at Evanston Public Library. It’s not the people, they’re great. And it’s not the collection since I absolutely love what we already have on hand and what I’m able to get. No, for me, my frustration stems from all the incredible things we provide that nobody has even […]
March 16, 2018
Roughly ten years ago I worked for New York Public Library. 2008 was, as you might recall, a year of great economic strife thanks in large part to the housing market crash. The ways in which libraries responded to this emergency varied from state to state, but in the case of NYPL there was one […]
February 28, 2018
Anyone can write a book. The question is, “How do you draw attention to it?” The Evanston Public Library is offering a service that aims to answer that question. I don’t think I’m surprising anyone when I say that self-publishing has come a long way. Gone are the days when vanity presses were the sole […]
February 14, 2018
I get very attached to my adopted homes. Evanston is probably the smallest of the cities I’ve lived in for long periods of time and, for that reason, I find it the most fascinating. Sitting like a little hat on the top of Chicago, it seems to have this odd ability to pull in talent […]
February 2, 2018
Black History Month is here. For many libraries and bookstores, this means pulling together large displays of black authors, black subject matter, black history, etc. But as many have pointed out, this month often turns out to be the only time these books are ever highlighted. Indeed some libraries and bookstores outright refuse to create […]
