Pulp and Fibre
Dear Mountain Friends and Neighbors,
Not unlike our first cautious buds of spring, there is tentative hope in the air as Boulder County and our community move to the Safer-at-Home phase of this COVID-19 pandemic. Still, those who call the mountains their home know the vagaries of nature and life, and optimism inevitably comes with prudence.
As we transition to this next phase, NCL is committed to working hard to continue to deliver library services in ways that keep you both safe and sane.
We are currently in the process of redesigning our website to better reflect our library's new normal. There, you will find not only updates on our 2020 summer happenings, but also information that details our safety protocols and procedures. Since community and staff safety is always our primary responsibility, we closely monitor Boulder County public health guidelines and mandates. We currently have an operational checklist that ensures we are in compliance with distancing, face coverings, sanitizing, and monitoring employee health.
With these guidelines in place, we are continuing our Monday-Saturday, 10AM-2PM, appointment-only library services and non-contact curbside pickup. Send us an email or call us for more information. Last month, we had 2,337 items circulate, so we know Ned is still reading, listening and viewing great library content! As many of you already know, our courier system that allows us to share items from other libraries has been temporarily halted, but we believe it will be back up and running soon. Until then, we are ordering new items every day (thank you again UPS and FedEx) and appreciate that, as much as is safely possible, everyone is returning items in a timely manner so our shelves are well stocked.
Though we've been saddened to have to cancel our Summer Reading kick-off party and all our large events, we are celebrating and documenting milestones in other exciting ways. This summer we are inviting everyone to be part of documenting and preserving our individual and collective COVID mountain histories in the ways that best resonate with you--- traditional book arts, oral histories, storyquilting, vlogging, and any /or all combinations! This is most definitely a summer enrichment program for all ages and stages of life. From cartooning to spoken word poetry we want to collect it all. Most excitingly, we will be adding your stories (and howevery they manifest themselves) to our local history collection (both physical items and digitized items), cataloging them and enabling them to be accessed in perpetuity. For younger generations, the idea of content creation and access may not be as intuitively inspiring as for us library nerds, so have your younger folks in your home vritually check out some of the great libraries of the world. Once their works get cataloged in our little remote NCL corner of the world, teach them how grandmom can Interlibrary loan their item from a different state! Or maybe one of those great national libraries!!!!!
One of the many things about our upcoming summer program that we are excited about is that we are so fortunate to have experienced book artisans and historians in our community. From papermaking to letterpressing to bookbinding, we have local talent that will be providing small-group instruction (with quality materials) through either person-to-person individualized programs or through video tutorials. And lots of Ned writers and historians to help with the wordsmithing part.
Whether you choose to be part of our #NedSpeaks oral history program or delve into the expressive book arts, (or anything else you come up with), we will be providing physical and virtual resources to help you. (Thank you in advance Library Foundation for your continued support of our summer programs!)
Stay tuned to our website, Facebook and newsletter as we all communally pulp, fibre and etch our ways into the history books.
Stay well,
Elektra Greer, NCL Director
