Oh, Thank Goodness!

Actually, thank Steve! I feel like I can breathe again - the new WiFi system is installed and working. I can even get a signal way back in the corner where my desk is squirreled away! Someone needs to update Maslow's chart for certain. WiFi IS a basic need. So, bravo to you Steve, our dedicated IT department head, we can once again get a strong signal pretty much anywhere we wander in the building.

Oh, and we have some nice new chairs and tables too! Thank you Charlene for steering the color scheme in the right direction. The lounge chairs are comfortable AND durable, the coffee tables are very nice, and I've already heard compliments on the wooden charis and tables. Once we get the Technology Center plans hung on the wall (the frames are on their way), we'll have a nice area to sit, relax, read, compute, AND contemplate how to make the larger plan a reality.

Do you ever have that sinking feeling?

You know, where you just feel leaden, you are treading water, but just barely? Well, here at HPL we seem to be having a month-long marathon of water-treading.

Not only are we still recovering from the storms of early August, we seem to be running on to new little twists of the dagger that just make the recovery that much more painful. But some good things are on the horizon. For one, our lightning-damaged wireless system ended up dying after all. How is that good? Although it bumped a planned change up to a fire-alarm style immediate change, we will have a new, robust system installed by the end of this week.

OOO - swirly!

There have been many other problems, large and small, to come out of those soggy, electrically-charged rainy weeks, but those are being slowly resolved. Sometimes, it the sheer number of them seem to swallow up any other progress being made. Our new telephone system with building-wide emergency paging is finally coming online as well. Progress is being made on improving our collection security, organization, and staff efficiency by adding RFID to the building.

Don't worry though, the RFID tags will not store your personal information. The tags store information about the book to which they are affixed and will help us with inventory and help you with speedy, accurate check-out. Library cards and patron information will stay private.

New furnishings will fill the space left when we moved the 900s non-fiction collection upstairs. By the end of this month there will be a variety of new, comfortable chairs to use for study and computing.

Last, but definitely not least, HPL has subscribed to a crowd-source fundraising site called WishList. This will go live for us in the next week or so and will allow patrons to purchase memorial and "in honor of" books online, contribute toward large projects, browse volunteer opportunities at the library and join the Friends of the Library group, among many other things. I'm really excited about this! It will be awesome - I just hope I haven't drowned before it goes live!