I hope I can adequately express to you how happy I felt during the welcome reception given for me by the Friends of the Norman Williams Public Library on Monday, November 13th. It was inspiring and uplifting to see the Reading Room filled with such bright energy and beautiful smiles on a dark, wintry afternoon. The room was full of library Friends, as well as members of the NWPL Board of Trustees, our state reps, and lots of folks from the community. I realized as I looked around the room last night that many, if not all of you, are “Library Regulars!” You come to the library to knit, to help decide on art for our gallery walls, to borrow books, to read newspapers quietly in the Reading Room by the fire, to play cribbage and bridge, to take Learning Lab classes, to join our book group discussions, and you come to volunteer your time with us. The fundraising and “friend-raising” good will efforts of NWPL Trustees and Friends and the general public are essential to the library. But your daily or weekly visits to the library are equally as important. So please keep coming to the library! And next time you come in be sure to give us a suggestion for a book you’d like us to buy, a program we could run, a DVD you want us to add to the collection or anything at all. Your suggestions and feedback will help us improve and hone our services for all of Woodstock.
This year at Thanksgiving time I have much to be grateful for. I am grateful for my career which is so sustaining for me, and for my new role here at NWPL, which is a dream come true. I am grateful for my loved ones, my good health, my energy and my hobbies. And I am very grateful for the warm welcome I have received since I arrived here in July. So thank you to the Friends of the NWPL for a wonderful reception and thank you to all of the NWPL Trustees and everyone else who attended.
