Kieran’s notes from the back room : With a nod of my hat to Mark Twain (meaning I am about to rework a quote from him. Yeah, sort of well intentioned plagiarism) reports of the death of libraries are greatly exaggerated. Library usage is on the rise here at the John C. and across the nation. Nope, neither those e-readers, nor Kindles, nor the Nook, have made paper book obsolete. Nor did the internet cause any dearth in information seeking people from coming through the doors of the local library. …

From Gypsy’s Corner: The counters are coming.  What? New furniture you say? No.  I mean representatives from the US Census Bureau are coming to your Library several days in March and April to host info and assistance sessions with the public.  Why do we need to be counted by the government you ask?  Well that’s a good question, and it turns out that a whole lot of people wonder the same thing.  And so the folks in charge of all that counting want to be here (and all over the …

Kieran’s notes from the back room:  Have you ever learned a trade or picked up a hobby because you wanted to use the fancy tool associated with it?  (I want to use that neat wrench, I think I ‘ll become an auto mechanic!) Yeah, probably not – well maybe when you were ten years old.  It’s more likely you found a whole bunch of neat shiny tools that you could use to do something you already had an interest in.  (This wrench will help me when I have to change …