JollyLibrarian

First, I must make a confession. Although I have a degree in English, I am not a poet or a scholar of poetry. When I taught Introduction to Literature many  years ago, I was often as confused as my students about the poems and their meanings. And I am a person who likes meaning; I did [...]

Yesterday, there was a dedication ceremony to name the NSCC Library the John E. Mayfield Library. John Mayfield has been one of NSCC’s biggest supporters throughout the years, donating funds that have allowed students the opportunity to attend college. He is also owner of a bookstore and recognizes the importance of books to not only our [...]

Let us consider the scone. It is a beautiful thing to behold. It has the qualities of both sweet and bread. It’s substantial enough to keep your appetite at bay, and the cinnamon scone is a sweet treat indeed. Sure, it’s not fancy like chocolate mousse or tiramisu, but its plain beauty calls out from [...]

As we continue to clean out the library in preparation for the upcoming renovations, we are learning many things about ourselves as well. Some we knew: some of us are procrastinators, some of us would rather die than throw anything out, and some of us would throw out everything and start over if we could. [...]

Two things happened last that created this topic for me: I happened to be going through my journal which I started in the summer of last year. One particular day in June, I was incredibly upset and hurt by the carelessness of a friend. I was so focused on my hurt feelings that I never [...]

Billy Collins, a former poet laureate, is one of the most popular “serious” poets writing today, often described as being “accessible,” a word not often used for modern poetry. But keep in mind accessible does not necessarily mean easy or superficial. I always liked using his poems in my classes because students were not intimidated by them but quickly saw how [...]

One of our students stopped me in Target the other week. “You’re my librarian,” he exclaimed. I was thrilled by the identification, especially the “my.” It seems to me that if librarians and library workers do their jobs, that’s exactly how students should feel: that we are there for them.  We  are theirs. I just [...]

Life is not easy when you’re trying to lose weight. Temptation and bad news are everywhere. First, The New York Times told us what we all knew but still didn’t want to hear: Exercise by itself, was not going to help us lose weight. One expert was especially disheartening: “’In general, exercise by itself is [...]

To be honest, this is not a lesson learned from the library, but one that I learned from our library never throwing anything out. Last week, my friend  Ralph responded to my post, noting that he had a routine of throwing out one paper from his files for every paper that went in. A former [...]

I was at a 10-year-old’s baseball game on Saturday. One boy, with bases loaded, and two outs, made a hit. The ball went flying into the outfield and the other team had to scramble to chase it. But one boy did, in fact, catch it, and our side was out with no runs. The little [...]