Wednesday, June 29, 2005

It's a long way west!



Today I drove from Topeka to WaKeeney and Norton. Kansas is a l-o-n-n-n-g state! But the weather was beautiful and the scenery breathtaking. There were miles and miles of wheat fields being harvested.
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I stopped and visited with Louella Kaiser at the WaKeeny City Library. She had the most beautiful "stained glass"windows in her library! They were a project of the summer library program kids and are actually painted on with washable paint. The library staff is working on retroconversion of their catalog records. Soon, no old fashioned card catalog for WaKeeney!

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Next I drove to Norton and visited Leslie Bell and the staff at the North West Kansas Library System (NWKLS). NWKLS works with 21 libraries in 10 counties, and provides consulting in addition to a range of services like materials ordering and rotating collections. Leslie invited me to an potluck supper with her staff, board members and the staff of the Norton Public Library. The food was great!

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NWKLS and the Norton Public Library are side by side in a remodeled school building. The Public Library is lovely, and Kay LeBeau, the director, gave me a tour to point out some of the current projects in the library.

Kay and I are pictured below behind the circulation desk holding date stampers. That's how we used to check out books "in the good old days"!

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Time to head back to the hotel for a good nights rest before Leslie picks me up in the morning for day two of the tour of NWKLS libraries!

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