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Hello Rumbo readers. I hope you were all able to come to the St.
Patrick’s Day Parade last week. It was a lot of fun. Councilor
Marie Gosselin deserves a lot of credit for putting on such a fine
event. Congratulations to the whole crew from the Wetherbee School
for taking the top prize and also thanks to Colie Ryan of the
Claddagh Pub for making his upstairs space available for the
children’s party afterwards.
We are approaching two big days here at the library. Wednesday,
the 22nd, is the launch of our Tutor.com project that I discussed
in my last article. Then on April 7th, at 4:00 p.m., we will be
having our open house to show everyone our renovations and to open
our new local history room. Louise Sandberg, our special
collections librarian, and Patricia Jaysane, director of the
Lawrence History Center, will be putting together an exhibit on
the Lawrence flood of 1936 which will be displayed at both
locations from March 20th to the 24th.
Even though the local history room will not be open officially
till the above date we are proud to already be able to offer
interesting exhibits there. I always am particularly pleased when
our library can collaborate with other organizations in the city
to produce quality events, displays and programs.
Also, on the subject of the local history room, Ms. Sandberg will
be holding the third annual genealogy lock-in on Friday, April
28th at 5:30. P.M. The lock-in has proved very popular over the
last couple of years and it looks like it is getting better all
the time. Participants will come to the library and hear a lecture
by Robert Johnson-Lally of the Archdiocese of Boston and then
enjoy an Eastern European style meal.
The rest of the evening will be devoted to research and we will
make available to participants all of the library’s resources
including computers, printers, microfilm readers, etc. Ms.
Sandberg and other members of our staff will be on hand to help
participants find their way to genealogy sites online and to other
records held here in the library. Come and find out about your
family roots. The lock-in has a fee of $10.00 per participant and
is most certainly worth the modest investment.
My reference, audio-visual and South Lawrence Branch staff are all
busy working on the purchasing for the Verizon grant that we
obtained through our consortium. We should soon be able to offer a
huge selection of new language-learning materials to our patrons.
We are trying to cover as large a group of languages as possible
while still making sure we have sufficient material for our
Spanish-speaking majority and for English-speakers wishing to
learn Spanish.
We have decided on April 4th at 7:00 p.m. as our organizational
meeting for our newly reformed Friends of the Library group. There
are a lot of exciting projects coming up for the Friends to take
part in including helping with the new Catherine McCarthy trust
fund musical series, creation of the library historically themed
calendar as well as book sales and preparing an event to celebrate
the 30th anniversary of the Friends. Please attend this meeting
and become part of what I believe will be a vital and exciting
organization. We want the whole community’s participation in this.
Meanwhile, see you at the library.
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