Suggestions, Anyone?

Any Lakeview patrons who would like to make your library better, please feel free to use our online suggestion box. Suggest programs you think the neighborhood would like, or ways we can make Lakeview more user-friendly!

Survey Monkey-ing the Northside

I did ask for and receive responses to recent posts (thanks guys, that was a great assignment and gets us more united as an online community), open my blog to comments from anyone, comment on others' blogs and even did the online suggestion box (see above post). But it seems a bit of a Week-Four-cheat to piggy-back on someone else's efforts; in this case the Northside Planning Council which has conveniently set up a Northside Consumer Questionnaire in Survey Monkey. We at Lakeview have been collecting the paper copies hand over fist for the last couple of weeks, but any missed Northsiders out there can also take it online through October 29th. All you Project Players out there can check out a real world example.

As to the part of the assignment that asks for us to comment on how we could use feedback thingies for our library, my first thought is that I would solicit opinions both by posting online and by using the neighborhood paper (done by the Northside Planning Council), The Northside News. The whole neighborhood receives it in the mail and it is very widely read. The Northside Consumer questionnaire hit all 'venues': with a copy in the current Northside News, copies available in the Library and at the Northside Farmer's Market, and, as mentioned, online. They did a really good job.
As to what I would ask in a feedback thingie, the suggestion the Project Players made to solicit programming ideas struck a chord. This is fun!

It's Not Books, Lakeview or the Northside, But...

I just heard a terrific Wisconsin Public Radio show featuring the chief curator of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Through January 13, 2008, self-taught folk artist Martín Ramírez (1895–1963) is the subject of their featured exhibition. He came to the United States from Mexico in 1925 and worked on the railroad and in the mines of Northern California for 5 years before he was picked up for homelessness and institutionalized. He spent the last 30 years of his life in "asylums", probably wrongly diagnosed as schizophrenic, making large scale drawings and collages which were thrown away (for 15 years!) until a professor, curiously of both psychology and art, happened upon some of his work while visiting the asylum. It was thought for a long time that many of his paintings depicted the Statue of Liberty until the art world realized they were Madonnas modeled on those of his Spanish Catholic roots. Kathleen Dunn, host of the WPR program, raved about the sheer beauty of the pieces, which is all the more incredible as one learns that he used available materials such examining room paper, cups from the water cooler, and mashed potato paste and oatmeal for glue for his collages.
This Wikipedia article has some good links.
I haven't seen the museum since the "wings" were added in 2001, but this story is great motivation for a road trip

136 Friends and $1.53 million

While Doris Lessing was out shopping today, the Swedish Academy announced that she had won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. I remember reading The Golden Notebook in the heady days of the late '60's/early '70's wave of the U.S. feminist movement. Interesting that someone who was uncomfortable with the feminist label is only the 11th woman to have won the prize since it was first awarded in 1901. Cybertrivia from the above linked article: "She is also probably one of the oldest people anywhere to have her own page on the popular social networking web site MySpace. On a recent visit the site announced, under the label "Female - 87 years old," that "Doris Lessing has 136 friends.""
Has anyone read her lately?

Book-Loving City

We're lucky to live a city which, for it's size, is able to attract big name authors. This week, from tomorrow through Sunday, the sixth annual Wisconsin Book Festival presents a mind-boggling array of authors and bookish events in venues all over town. From the biggies, like Michael Cunningham, Harold Kushner, T. C. Boyle, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Rick Bass, Terry Tempest Williams and Zakes Mda to more local favorites like Jean Feraca, Jacquelyn Mitchard, David Obey, Matthew Rothschild, James DeVita and Michael Perry, there's something for everyone. Be there or be square.

http://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org/

What events are you planning to attend, or what would you like to attend if you could?

So Goes the Weekend

It was a one-day weekend, but had fun. Saw a great production of "Death of a Salesman" at the Madison Rep. Also started a book, "A Beautiful Blue Death", by Charles Finch, the debut novel of a British mystery series which looks like the perfect book to curl up with on a cool Fall day (hey, sooner or later...).

RSS feeds for a good time

I already subscribed to blogs through Google's feed reader, so this (note "fave blogs" lower left) wasn't new to me. Blogs I like to read and find helpful for work include Pop Culture Book Review http://popculturebookreview.blogspot.com/, which my daughter Emily does. She reads books "all the cool kids are reading", keeping me informed about the young twenties demographic. I read Sarah Cords' Nonanon http://nonanon.com/blog, because I always feel there is enough non-fiction in real life, so I let her read it !