Beautiful New Space

We are in the process of moving our Holy Cross branch.  On Wednesday and Thursday we had tons of volunteers who moved shelves, assembled furniture, loaded book carts, and help with anything else we needed.  Thank you so much!!  Where would we be without our Friends?  I also want to thank my staff who pitched in and did such a lot of work!

There is still work to do at Holy Cross and so we hope to be open later next week depending on the weather.  We would rather not move computers in a snowstorm.  But, the space is beautiful.  There is so much light.  And we have new furniture!  We will have an open house in the near future and you simply have to come see our new digs.

Speaking of open houses, the next Friends open house is at our Asbury branch on Saturday, March 2nd from 10 a.m. until noon.  Come have a cookie and lemonade and sign up for the great door prizes provided by the Friends.  Friends members would love to chat about what the organization does to support the Library and City Manager, Beth Bonz, will be here to talk about the community campus project in Asbury which would include City Hall, the Police Department, and the Library.

I should never pay attention to weather forecasters.  It's not their fault, but you really can't predict Iowa snowstorms.  I cancelled our All Iowa Reads book discussion for Thursday evening and it didn't even start snowing until rather late in the evening.  So, the discussion is rescheduled for Thursday, February 28th at 6:00 p.m. at our NICC/Branch Library.  This gives you another chance to read "The Year We Left Home" by Jean Thompson and join us!  Copies are available at all of our branches.  In March, we will be reading and discussing Fanny Flagg's "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe."

The Library Board has been busy with financial matters this past month and will hold a public hearing on the library budget on Wednesday, March 6th at 6:00 p.m. at our Drexler/Farley branch.  The County will hold its public hearing on March 11th.  The Supervisors are tightening up all of the county department budgets and the library is no exception.  The Supervisors are cutting 4.4% from the current year and 3.7% from next year's budget.  The largest decreases are in our book and programming lines.

The Library Board voted this week to participate in the Library Services Advisory Committee for Dubuque County.  This is a new task force to study library services and see where we can share resources, reduce costs, and provide quality service at all the libraries in the county.  The committee will be planning town hall meetings and forums all over the county to ask our customers how we can improve library service.  Those meetings will begin later in March. 

This weekend my family is gathering here for my husband's birthday.  It's a milestone one.  Let's keep our fingers crossed for safe travel.  Have a great weekend.   Dawn