Verb: library lovin’

More than a year has passed since I started Librarytour. It’s true that I’m shocked by this fact. In that time, I visited a smattering of new (to me) libraries, blogged some of those visits, drove past dozen of libraries that I did not have the opportunity to enter, and daydreamed about visiting a whole lot more.

It’s also true that I spend more time thinking about this blog than writing it. This is unfortunate, though perhaps not surprising. In the part of my life not devoted to touring the esteemed free public library, I have:
• Been immersed in my job as Community Liaison for a community-based non-profit
• Joined the Boston Bike Advisory Board to help turn my fair city a fairer city for cyclists
• Started revising my middle grade novel and shopped my YA novel to an agent
• Celebrated my 30th birthday
• Gotten more serious about eating well, exercising well, and loving the people I love well
• Started a 101 Things list

I’ve been busy, but I haven’t been gone (that is, I haven’t left my natural habitat: Boston, the writing landscape, the computer, the library), and this blog has never been far from my thoughts. In fact, I’ve spent a fair amount of time pondering my goals: what do I want to talk about here. What should I avoid? In particular, something that happened to me related to the blog made me feel the need to step back, re-read what I’ve written so far, and re-consider my course.

After much consideration, and no small amount of procrastination, I came up with this:
First and foremost, Librarytour should celebrate libraries –the books, the amazingly talented and helpful staff, the quirks, the nooks and crannies, the richness, the free, oh the beautiful, bountiful free where all one needs to do is write one’s own name on a tiny slip of paper to belong . . . (where else in life can a person experience such a limitless, guiltless pleasure?)

Librarytour should focus on the details as I see them; details that make each library unique. I want to invite you, my guests, into my head to see the world as I see it behind those glass doors, between those oak shelves.

Librarytour should keep on keeping on: posts need to be shorter (so I actually have time to write them) and they need to keep coming!

So, with those three goals in mind, I will commence with my library lovin’(verb). Please, stay tuned and, if you’re of a mind, visit your own public library. If you find something that gets you so you just have to write about it, feel free to drop me a line. I’d be honored to host your post (rhyme not intended, but there it is anyway).

My first tour

My first official librarytour, wherein I intentionally visited a library I had not yet seen to tour it and compare it against my favorites, took me to Newton Free Library.  A friend mentioned it to me in passing so, when my mother was up for a visit one weekend and we had nothing planned, I suggested we head on over.

A come back

You may think I have disappeared from this blog, but no, not so much, I haven’t. During many too busy months working on my middle grade novel, buying gifts for the 2007/8 holidays, working, and taking classes (quilting!), I just couldn’t find the time to take my camera to the library to do the old clickety-click.

This, my friends, has changed! I am back, full of bright ideas. I am ready to gush about my favorite aspects of free public libraries, and moan about those that are less appealing.

My new surge in blogging energy is in part due to a terrific class I took at CCTV (that’s Cambridge Community Television to the uninitiated): Blogging 101. Blogging 101’s students were so impressed, so inspired by, and interested in the subject of creating and building a better blog, CCTV offered, immediately following, a sort of Blogging 101.2.

So! This is just to say tuned for more library goodness. See you soon.

Adverb: library-lovin’

I love books and reading, but it might be true that I enjoy the library just a tad bit more. Just a tad.