Prairie Book Festival

Nearly an entire month without a post - shame on me!  I use this blog to get crazy ideas out of my head, mull, blather on, etc.  Lately though, it seems like I haven't even had time to type for 15 minutes.  My excuse is that we have had a tremendous amount of projects going at the Hutchinson Public Library, the main one for me being the Prairie Book Festival which happened this past Saturday.  This was the inaugural PBF and we hope there will be more to come.  The Hutchinson News had a nice write-up for us on Sunday.

We had a good crowd for a first-time event, despite this:

A nice line of windy, hail-making storms!

The storms arrived around 2:45-3pm and closed down our vendor area a little early, but we moved the remaining authors inside, relocated the storyteller to the storytime room, moved the music into the circulation area and carried right on to the end.

I truly appreciate all of our hard-working staff, volunteers, our great Friends of the Library group, and especially our Prairie Book Festival steering committee - many members of which fall in more than one of the groups mentioned!  They did a fantastic job and produced something great upon which we can build.

Here are a few of the photos taken throughout the day:

Author Carol Murray

Author Jim Hoy

Under the Author Tent

The Anthony Panek Group playing jazz

Book Festival, Reviews and ... Other

Less than one month to go!  The Prairie Book Festival has been getting a lot of great press - thank you Hutchinson News!

I just finished up the Dalai Lama's, Toward a True Kinship of Faiths subtitled How the World's Religions Can Come Together.  It was a fairly fast read and the points made are, in my opinion, spot on.  The similarities in the world's major religions on which the Dalai Lama focuses revolve around compassion for fellow man.  He goes on to show how it is possible to recognize other faiths as valid while remaining true to one's own faith.

Not quite a week ago, I (along with several other library directors) met with the new State Librarian of Kansas, Jo Budler, to discuss several issues of importance to libraries.  Among our discussion points were the state's downloadable audio books program, the state-wide database selection, and the possibilities for future collaboration in other areas.  Mainly, I was glad to see an interest in consensus building at the state level - something that has been sorely lacking in my opinion the few years I have been here.  It seems that there might be some interest among the directors of similar-sized libraries to continue meeting on a regular basis, either in person or through electronic means.  This too was welcome news to me as, again, I know that I can benefit as a director from collaboration and sharing of information.