Pencil Marks On the Closet Door Jamb, and Leaves in the Gutter

Many homes will have an out-of-the way location with a series of pencil marks one above another marking the growth of a child in the home.

Most new houses with a tree planted nearby will eventually have to deal with leaves on the roof and in the gutters. Unless the trees are dwarf varieties, or are kept cut back, the trees will keep growing until they die, and at some point will overshadow nearby homes.

A time-lapse series of photographs might show something similar for library shelves. A new library building will start with partially filled shelves. The shelves fill in over the next few years as new materials are added to the collection. Maybe some extra shelves are added in, and maybe seating space gets converted to shelving. Things get pruned away to make room for something else to expand.

Kilgore Memorial Library has lived this experience in its twenty-two years of operation. Shelf ranges that started out 40% filled are now at the stage where every new item forces the removal of an existing one. Every suggestion for a change in services has to deal with the question of how to fit it in.

The Summer 2007 rearrangement to make space for the Young Adult section included rearranging furniture, and replacing some bulky pieces with smaller, more streamlined pieces. Thankfully, providing public access computers has become a bit easier with the advent of flat panel monitors.

The upcoming "Avenue of Trees" will cover nearly every horizontal surface in the library, and the "top of range displays" of picture books in the children's area will go into retirement for the month.