Melody's Blog

Puzzle on his way to redemption This post clearly falls under the “odd posts” of my blog title. No real bearing on anything important, just random musing from a rather serendipitous experience this long weekend. I was on my comfy sofa finishing Platero and I , a book that had been on my to read list for a long time and I suddenly realized that this was the fourth book I had read in the past couple of weeks with donkeys making a major appearance! The others were Patricia Lynch’s Strangers at the Fair and Other Stories (selected stories from her Turf-Cutter’s Donkey series), May Sarton’s Joanna and Ulysses , and a re-read of Rumer Godden’s Operation Sippacik . Immediately, several other books with donkeys came to mind—one of my favorite Stevenson’s, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes and Maureen Daly’s The Private War of Sgt. Donkey . And a couple of donkey characters—Eeyore and Puzzle, the donkey who finds redemption in The Last Battle . And how could I forget Modestine/Nedd...

I recently started a new gig as volunteer library advisor for the American Islamic College . When my former student worker, Romana, called up and asked if I could talk with them about their library, I thought I'd go over, check it out, give them some ideas, and call it a day. But I really like their mission, I liked the folks who are working hard to get this going, and so now I am deep in dirty work of sorting books to make a decent library for them. It's all unclear to me how they happen to have thousands and thousands of old books, but 99% of them are not appropriate for their collection, so it is weeding and boxing time. Yesterday I had a couple of volunteers, my friend, Beth and a AIC volunteer. That was so helpful! This exercise is forcing me to think about how important it is to have a collection development policy and stick to it! Since I need to revise the CTU collection development policy, this is useful. It also has provided the reminder of how valued books are. When...