It's the End of the Year As We Know It

I really like end of the year lists - great books and materials; accomplishments; even adventures my friends have experienced - from the craptastic to the truly profound. I seldom have any round-up though.

For those of you who have met me, you know that I am starting to get, ahem, up there in years.  So thinking back over the year to remember exactly what book I've read, accomplishment that got accomplished or place I've been has become blurrier than it once was. I am mindful of my mom who sweetly went into dementia and can only hope that I can follow that mellow path rather than my usual cranky one. So indulge me a bit while I write a holiday letter to see if I can keep track.

At the library, we kept an ongoing list of new, good stuff. A few team highlights:

Library Star 2nd grade tours, high-energy field trips targeted at every 2nd grade class were developed, funded and were a huge mega-hit.

Reading is Key Club, a successful stealth program for tots was developed to encourage use of lots of collections besides Picture books

Partnered with pediactrics clinic for Reach Out and Read, a long-held dream

Introduced ECRR concepts into monthly Childcare Provider CE Meetings

      Sunset the CD-rom collection

      Started a Juvenile illustrated fiction - for 3-5th graders

Redesigned our Play, Learn, Read area into a more friendly, usable space for tots.

Added internet terminals in the Teen area - now they have their own space

All in all we made some good progress. We tried some fun new programs and are looking forward to more experimentation there. Had some highs; had some lows. The team did good.

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In my professional life this year, I tried some new stuff too: Twitter and Pinterest; ALA Council and our WLA board of directors; National Legislative day; served on the brand new South Asia Book Award and the ALSC School Age Services committee; traveled out of state to KS for two weeks to present SLP workshops there and taught an online graduate SLIS class. It was very stretchy and good for me to try LOTS of new stuff..

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On the blog front, Blogger happily keeps my stats and tells me things. This year, on the very same day last week, I hit 100 followers and 100,000 hits. Holy smollies. Thanks for reading the blog! I have met amazing people through this venue and it has been fun to be able to think, chat and rant with you all. I look forward to more of the same next year!  Have a great holiday season!