SEPTEMBER 2019

A Note From Mark 

At the Library's 75^th Anniversary Party put on by the Friends of the Library last month, we were able to announce that Leland Township approved a plan to allow us to use some of their (your) property here at the center of the Leland Cultural Campus to put an addition on the Library. While we are very early in this process and have no definite plans on exactly how things will look, we do have a vision based on the Strategic Plan we conducted in 2017 and a Needs Assessment conducted by Quinn Evans Architects last winter and spring.

After looking at how we use the facility now and what we foresee as our needs for the future, some proposals were made on how to best proceed. Number one for us is the fact that our children’s programs are becoming more and more popular and we are seeing continued and increasing use of our children’s room. The plan would be to expand this room while at the same time allowing us to better present our collections to children and parents while reducing the noise level that radiates throughout the Library, especially on days when we have programs for our youngest patrons.

And speaking of noise there has been an increased desire to return to having a “quiet” reading area or as we refer to it, an adult reading room. The Library has become a social center (and we like it that way), but a side effect is that the noise level can become quite elevated at times;  so being able to have a quiet room helps us offer something traditional library users expect, that being peace and quiet to be able to read a book or magazine or just enjoy the view of the river.

We would also like to have a program space that will give us the opportunity to have smaller meetings that don’t require the size or have the scheduling conflicts of the Munnecke Room. This area will also allow us to set up things like STEAM/Maker Space programs, activities, and equipment for long periods without interfering with the use of the Munnecke Room. This space can also allow us to be flexible so we can more easily adapt to whatever the future may bring.

An addition to the building will also be an opportunity to repair and update the existing structure which includes replacing the roof, increasing ease of handicap access, upgrading older, less energy efficient lighting, replacing HVAC equipment that is several years past its expected life, along with a long list of other projects that will need to be done soon and can be accomplished most cost effectively while contractors are already on site.

Of course, like all construction projects it will cost a considerable amount of money and we will be looking to the community for support as we always have in the past, along with other funding sources and grants made available to public libraries. So you will be hearing more and more about this exciting time as our vision takes shape for what is needed to ensure that the Leland Library remains relevant and vibrant for many years to come.
 
- Mark
 

Leland Fire & Rescue Chief Dan with our tiny patrons during our Touch a Truck program on August 16.
 
Programming Update

From The Front Desk:

Jake's September Recommendation

by Katie May Green

And now for something completely different.

Hide and Seek is a picture book written and illustrated today, but seeming to rise phantom-like from another era of children’s literature, one that was uniquely perceptive to the frisson that comes from encounters with the weird, the eerie, and the inexplicable margins of life. In short, a literature that made space for the mysterious. Katie May Green inherits that particular, Edwardian strain of spookiness admirably in this tale, set in an appropriately aged estate called Shiverhawk Hall where—naturally—portraits of children live on the wall. Two of the painted-children, twins in fact, are missing this night, and so the others—alongside a cavalcade of nocturnal rats, dogs, and black cats—leave their frames to search the grounds for them.

The illustrations, largely in nocturnal shades of gray, green, blue, and lavender, are initially reminiscent of the iconic work of

Actually, Hide and Seek reminds me more than anything else of the nocturnal wildlife photography of George Shiras, taken in the north woods of Michigan about a century ago. What weaves the two together is the way they reveal, in an almost magical way, the hidden side of the world, all those things going on behind our backs, archetypally coded as the night. That can read as sinister in some cases, but in the photographs of Shiras and the illustrations of Katie May Green, what comes out is the wonder of a world that is larger than us, a world that is full of secret games.