2005

There are many things parents would agree they want for their children. Health. Love. Family and friends. Success, defined as "a respectable job that pays well enough to provide all of the essentials, and some of the luxuries, of life."

But you know what I most want for each of my kids? I want them to have a rich inner life.

You can lose your health, your lover, even your family and friends. You can lose your job and your home. In disasters, you can lose your ability to put food on the table.

Back in 1992, I reprised a column I'd written even earlier. I find that I still don't have much to add. So here it is again. Happy holidays!

What we really need is an all-purpose gift that will satisfy everybody. It should be suitable for all ages. It should require no assembly. It shouldn't need batteries. You shouldn't have to feed it. It should last forever. It should be constantly entertaining. The more the recipient uses it, the more he or she should like it.

And of course, it should be free.

The last couple weeks of the year are precious to me.

The library's budget has been adopted for the next year. The meetings tend to be put off till January, because lots of people have taken time off.

The frenzy of shopping is done. The parties are over. Now comes one of the true gifts of the year: time to think.

So much of our lives is conducted as if we were in some kind of speed trial. Or as I read in "The World is Flat," by Thomas Friedman,

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.

During the recent recession, the Colorado State Legislature reduced state funding for libraries by almost 79%. Libraries were not, of course, the only services to take a hit.

That recession, along with various competing mandates -- federally mandated increases in Medicaid funding, State Constitutionally mandated increases in education funding, and TABOR mandated tax cuts -- meant that there simply wasn't enough money to keep funding many other programs at historic levels.

By Katie Klossner, Community Relations Manager for Douglas County Libraries

In August, I was upset to learn that my favorite playwright, August Wilson, had been diagnosed with liver cancer. In October, I was devastated to learn that he passed away (October 2). Last year, I had the opportunity to direct one of his early plays, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, in Colorado Springs.

My grandfather spent all this life as a business man. He dropped out of 10th grade to support his disabled mother. For awhile, Granddad worked through a correspondence course to become an attorney. Then the Depression hit.

So though he never became a lawyer, he got a taste for self-education. He remained a voracious reader.

Most of his working life, he drove a pastry truck, and considered himself lucky to have the job. Eventually, he wound up in appliance sales at a big department store, where he worked until his death at 72.

Last week, I took a few days off to give a talk at a library conference in Jackson, Wyoming.

I decided to drive. The library had gotten a complaint about a multiple-CD book, and this would give me a chance to listen to it.

The name of the book was "Light in August," by William Faulkner. Somehow, I'd never gotten around to reading Faulkner before.

Recently, I was elected to something called the OCLC Membership Council. OCLC is a company that has been around for over 30 years, since the dawn of library automation.

Nonetheless, OCLC is a little hard to define. It is...

* A world-wide libary catalog. OCLC is used by librarians in 109 countries to describe over a billion books, music and film recordings, theses, photographs, and other documents.

Recently, I wrote an article for a professional magazine about "the 21st century public library."

I outlined the broad process through which most public buildings are designed and constructed. The idea was to give librarians who haven't gone through all this a template to follow and to tweak.

Since then, I've been thinking more generally about the question, "What will tomorrow's library look like?"

I know people have wondered for years just what happens when somebody walks into the library with a question about local history. Well, now, thanks to Douglas County's government cable TV station, DC8, all our secrets have been laid bare.

It's in their recent "Kit Carson's Last Campfire," an original musical detailing the real story of Kit Carson in Douglas County. When challenged, the staff of the Douglas County History Research Center springs into action.