J. California Cooper is coming!!!

In case you haven’t heard, a very special guest is coming to Durham this weekend — the much-loved author J. California Cooper! Sponsored by the Durham Library Foundation, she will appear at Hayti Heritage Center, 804 Old Fayetteville St., on Sunday, February 7 at 3:00 pm. Her author talk is free and open to the public, and books will be available on-site for purchase from the NCCU Bookstore (Ms. Cooper will sign books following her talk). The author of novels, short stories and plays, Ms. Cooper’s work is alive with fascinating characters, a wonderful sense of place, and interesting themes. If you haven’t read any of her work, hop on over to the library and check some out!

Ms. Cooper’s appearance is a special event we’ve planned to coincide with the book discussion series Let’s Talk About It which begins on February 20 at 2:00 pm at the Stanford L. Warren library, located at 1201 Fayetteville Street, with a discussion of J. California Cooper’s Family. More information about the series is available on the Programs and Events tab on the library website (http://durhamcountylibrary.org/events.php) and I do hope you will join us. Let’s Talk About It Is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, in partnership with the North Carolina Center for the Book, a program of the State Library of North Carolina.

So grab your umbrella and come out and join us on Sunday for what promises to be an engaging and special afternoon with J. California Cooper.

– Marian Fragola, Humanities Coordinator (and guest blogger — thanks Skip!)

Planning for the Southwest Regional Grand Opening Begins

This morning I, and other library staff members, had a fantastic meeting with a group of people who love the Southwest Library and can’t wait for the new, improved version to open its doors.

We met to brainstorm some ideas for the May 24 Grand Opening. It’s shaping up to be an open house that will last all morning and into the afternoon, then will pick up later in the evening for some events targeted specifically at families. I’m calling it the Southwest Regional Grand Open House, but that’s just a working title. We’ll see how that shapes up along with the rest of the event.

To get the brainstorming session going, we invited a small group of people who live or work near Southwest to help us plan. We included representatives from elementary, middle and high schools and local businesses. We also invited a few of Southwest’s most enthusiastic customers. (I know there are many more out there!)

We ended up with a great group of 13 folks who had very creative ideas about how we can make this Grand Open House a real celebration. The goal of the open house is to give the community a chance to participate in the day, and to give customers a sample of the great programs and events at their library. So far we know there will be a ribbon cutting first thing, followed by a day full of Wii demos, storytimes, children’s choirs, tours of the new library and a visit from the Museum of Life and Science. There are lots of other ideas on the table (like Salsa dancing, a technology demo and a library scavenger hunt) but we’re still working on the details.

I’ll post here again as the planning shapes up. In the meantime, check out the latest interior pictures — the building is really coming together. The skylights are my personal favorite.

–Gina Rozier, Marketing and Development Manager

Kostroma Leaders Visit

For a week in November, librarians from Durham’s sister city Kostroma, Russia visited Durham.  On Tuesday, the 17th, they toured Stanford L. Warren Library, East Regional Library, and Main Library.  They took 1000 photos!  Or more!!!  Carter Cue at Warren, Carol Passmore at East, Joel White at Main and others showed them what we do in public libraries in America.  More information was posted in a letter to the Durham News by Anne Berkley, Co-Chair of the Kostroma Committee (of Sister Cities of Durham), at http://www.thedurhamnews.com/109/story/200114.html.  Formerly a librarian with Durham County Library, Ms. Berkley says,

Five Russian leaders participating in the Open World Program have spent the past week in Durham learning about public access to government information in various types of libraries.

The Kostroma Committee of Sister Cities of Durham has hosted the delegation. Managed by the independent Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress, Open World enables emerging Eurasian leaders to experience American-style democracy at the local level.

Reading Together, Being Together

Special times in Durham happen for most of us, often. Extra special times come around only every now and then.  Now is one of those times.

This whole month all across our city and county, thousands of us are reading Something for the Pain, by Durham ER Doctor Paul Austin.   What a great book!  We watch ER and Grey’s Anatomy and now Mercy, but in this book we have real-life insights into life and work surrounding the busy and stressful Durham Regional Hospital emergency room.

Library staff in all our locations decked out this week in doctor’s scrubs we made up specially for this month of community reading and programs and discussion.  Sunday, I had the pleasure to attend the program “For Better or For Worse: When Your Spouse Has a Stressful Job.”  What a wonderful kickoff program with Monica Barnes moderating a panel including Sally Austin, Nicole Marsalis, John McCallie, and Paula Flood, each one of whose famous spouses has a stressful job that of course creates challenges back on the home front.

The month is chock full of great programs and events.  Take a look at our Durham Reads Together web page at http://www.durhamcountylibrary.org/drt/ to see the full list.  Dr. Austin is attending many of the programs and will be at Durham Tech on October 22 and the Sarah P. Duke Gardens on November 1.

Coming up next is “Faith and Healing” with Dr. Lori Carter-Edwards of the Duke Medical Center and Dr. Susan Dunlap of Duke Divinity School this Saturday morning at East Regional Library.  See you there or at one of the yoga sessions every Monday evening this month at Parkwood Library!

Hjorring (Denmark) Public Library

Two Durham County Library staff members recently visited Denmark as part of their library science program at North Carolina Central University. They were completely wowed by the libraries there.

In the meantime, one of our architects who conducted the Main Library Planning & Programming study last summer and fall is Ed Lazaron, of The Design Collaborative in Virginia Beach. He recently sent me the following link and said:

“Check out this library. Is Durham ready for something this modern?”

* http://www.walkingpaper.org/2090 *

What do you think?

New Pictures from South & Southwest

Select the page links to the right to see that latest pictures from South and Southwest

South Regional Progress

Some new pictures have been added to the South Regional Page (click the link to the right). It looks like it’s almost time for the foundation to be poured.

Main Library – “Main Street”

The Main Library is ready for its close up.

As you may know, the Main Library will be closed this Friday, May 1, so that the Main Street Film Company can shoot a scene from the movie here.

Of course, I never make a decision to close a library facility lightly. If budget and staff levels allowed, I would have the library open more hours on more days of the week. But every once in awhile, an opportunity comes up that warrants a second look and a change in plans. A number of County sites and facilities were pressed into service for the making of this movie, and when the request came through to use the Main Library, I had a choice to make.

After carefully weighing the benefits of having the library featured in a major motion picture against the inconvenience of closing a facility for a day, I decided that the long-term benefits were worth it. Movies help to put communities on the map, and Durham has certainly made this work to its advantage. This is the 19^th movie to be shot in Durham. The state of North Carolina even has an incentive program to encourage movie production here. We’re proud that our community and your library will be seen on screens across the country.

The short-term inconvenience has a long-term payoff for Durham in another way as well: The Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates the economic impact of filming a movie with Durham as the primary location at more than $4.5 million. http://www.durham-nc.com/resources/pdf/economicimpactoffilmindurham.pdf. We are happy to do our part to encourage that kind of financial boost for our community during these tough economic times.

For the use of the library, Main Street Film Company will cover all expenses incurred with the closure, and they are making a generous donation of $1,000 to the Durham Library Foundation.

I hope you will take this opportunity to visit our Stanford L. Warren Library. If you have never been before, you are missing a historic jewel and a beautiful library. And look for the Durham County Main Library coming soon to a theatre near you . . .

Poetry for Everyone

Every single Poetry for Everyone program of the past two years has been special.  It’s just so special for people to pick out a poem and share a little about why they like it and why it has special meaning.  The program is a chance for people to connect across all boundaries.  Al Roberts, who is the Chair of the Library Board of Trustees, talked about his love of history and then read us “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” at the Main Library.

At Stanford L. Warren Library, Nathan and Wanda Garrett, who are, respectively, the chairman emeritus of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance and a retired attorney & community activist, “performed” a joint reading of “Strong Men” by Sterling Brown.  This was a powerful reading, which begins:

They dragged you from homeland,
They chained you In coffles,
They huddled you spoon-fashion in filthy hatches,
They sold you to give a few gentlemen ease.

This past Sunday afternoon, as at each program, I had the opportunity to read a couple of poems.  Like last year, I picked a Billy Collins poem, this one called “The Trouble with Poetry.”  He refers to a poetry book by Lawrence Ferlinghetti that he carried with him “up and down the treacherous halls of high school,” so I also picked out and read Ferlinghetti’s “Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes.”  It’s also about connecting people across boundaries.

At Parkwood Library, Chief Jose Lopez started with “Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?” (the COPS theme).  But he was just joking and switched over to “Casey at the Bat,” which he read with relish.  He said he’s not that much into poetry, but his reading was good, like all the readers.  Tra Farrington is in high school & is ready to go to college in the fall.  He truly wowed the audience by not just reading but performing two of his own poems, including “I’m Not a Poet.” That title is really a bit of irony, given what the two poems demonstrated to us all.

The library’s Humanities Coordinator, Marian Fragola, dreamed up Poetry for Everyone last April for National Poetry Month.  Durham is blessed with great people, and Marian contacts many of them to pick a favorite poem or two and tell about them and read them at these events.  Maybe next year we can hear her read one of her favorites.  Or maybe even this coming Sunday afternoon at East Regional Library, the final event before Pat Mora comes to town for the “finale” poetry reading on April 30.  And in case you didn’t know, Pat Mora is the founder of the nationwide program Children’s Book Day, El día de los libros.

See you there!

Southwest Work

Work continues at Southwest. See the Southwest page on the right for updated pictures.