We drove back to Sigli early Monday morning. The drive was not so congested, not as many cars but lots of monkeys and cows. We have yet to get a good monkey picture but keep trying.
Back at the library, our task was to review the performance measures that the staff had been keeping and to pull out some key messages to share with the Canadian ambassador when he comes for the visit. It was wonderful to see the growth in every aspect of library service over the past year. The staff were eager to share their successes with us and we all felt very proud. In January 2007, 70 books were borrowed during the month...compare this with 1400 borrowed in January 2008. There were 100 visitors in January 2007, this past January had 2264 visitors. The staff are also now collecting the visitor stats by gender and we are very pleased to note that this past April, there were 2290 visitors, 1242 were female and 1048 were male.
We continue to work together preparing for World Environment Day on June 5. Katherine brought over some paints for the library and the staff planned a poster contest to draw attention to the Day and involve the community. On Tuesday the staff ran a programme where the children and youth could work on painting their posters for the contest. Programming like this is all new for the staff. It was great to see over a dozen young people being creative in the libary and looking at books about the environment. We are all looking forward to the big day. Sigli is celebrating this day with many NGO's and its expected that the library will get 25 trees planted on the grounds as part of the official ceremonies. We'll keep you posted.
While the poster making was happening, we spent time assessing the collection layout and what can be done to shelve the materials in a more logical fashion. Everything is catalogued ala Dewey but as we have already mentioned, shelving had been done by size of book and interest, rather than by Dewey. For instance, books of interest to students are all clustered together. There is now a combination of old and new shelving and our task is to find a useful way to shelve the various collections and new materials. We shared our notes with the staff at the end of the day and they had pretty much come to the same conclusions. They are very eager to make any changes that make the library more inviting and functional and we're positive that the collection will soon get ship shape.
We had sad news today, Mr. Muhktar's brother-in-law passed away. He was a 45 year old farmer and he died of cancer, likely from the pesticides used in farming. The library staff offered that we could come along with them to pay our respect to the family. We had to wear head veils, a first for us. Katherine had a lovely silk scarf which she wore Jackie O. style and looked quite glamorous when she was able to keep it on her head. When we first arrived, Mr. Muhktar introduced us to his mother and to his wife. He stayed with us in the women's quarters and we were served a lunch.
We spent the evening working on the 'Kapok' tree puppets. Although we are lagging and tired most evenings, we made it until 10:00 last night. The art project helped keep us going. We did have a goofy Dewey moment when all words starting with the letter D made us laugh hysterically. This is when we knew it was time to hit the sack.
Back at the library, our task was to review the performance measures that the staff had been keeping and to pull out some key messages to share with the Canadian ambassador when he comes for the visit. It was wonderful to see the growth in every aspect of library service over the past year. The staff were eager to share their successes with us and we all felt very proud. In January 2007, 70 books were borrowed during the month...compare this with 1400 borrowed in January 2008. There were 100 visitors in January 2007, this past January had 2264 visitors. The staff are also now collecting the visitor stats by gender and we are very pleased to note that this past April, there were 2290 visitors, 1242 were female and 1048 were male.
We continue to work together preparing for World Environment Day on June 5. Katherine brought over some paints for the library and the staff planned a poster contest to draw attention to the Day and involve the community. On Tuesday the staff ran a programme where the children and youth could work on painting their posters for the contest. Programming like this is all new for the staff. It was great to see over a dozen young people being creative in the libary and looking at books about the environment. We are all looking forward to the big day. Sigli is celebrating this day with many NGO's and its expected that the library will get 25 trees planted on the grounds as part of the official ceremonies. We'll keep you posted.
While the poster making was happening, we spent time assessing the collection layout and what can be done to shelve the materials in a more logical fashion. Everything is catalogued ala Dewey but as we have already mentioned, shelving had been done by size of book and interest, rather than by Dewey. For instance, books of interest to students are all clustered together. There is now a combination of old and new shelving and our task is to find a useful way to shelve the various collections and new materials. We shared our notes with the staff at the end of the day and they had pretty much come to the same conclusions. They are very eager to make any changes that make the library more inviting and functional and we're positive that the collection will soon get ship shape.
We had sad news today, Mr. Muhktar's brother-in-law passed away. He was a 45 year old farmer and he died of cancer, likely from the pesticides used in farming. The library staff offered that we could come along with them to pay our respect to the family. We had to wear head veils, a first for us. Katherine had a lovely silk scarf which she wore Jackie O. style and looked quite glamorous when she was able to keep it on her head. When we first arrived, Mr. Muhktar introduced us to his mother and to his wife. He stayed with us in the women's quarters and we were served a lunch.
We spent the evening working on the 'Kapok' tree puppets. Although we are lagging and tired most evenings, we made it until 10:00 last night. The art project helped keep us going. We did have a goofy Dewey moment when all words starting with the letter D made us laugh hysterically. This is when we knew it was time to hit the sack.
2 comments:
Daylight does discharge da night's denseness, Dawna. Duh. Oh, deep regrets if "duh" is deemed deprecating.
re: your "goofy Dewey moment"
D is for dog.
re: dogs:
dogs only hear vowels
xO
congrats on those numbers
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