Old Tucker library

I have had the honor over the last few weeks to help move the Tucker library from the old location to its new location. I say honor for several reasons. I grew up in the Tucker area and used the library since I was around four years old. I also worked at the branch from 1996-2001.

I worked the last day at the old location and it was truly a mix of emotions for many community members who came in and for myself. Did you know that the old location was built in 1965 and the entire library was contained in what we currently know as the Children’s area? The office in the Children’s area was the staff workroom and circulation area. The library opened with air conditioning which was uncommon for the time period. ( I remember on a hot summer day jumping for joy at a visit to the library to stand in front of the unit to cool off.)  The meeting room in the old location was the recreation center. Many of us that grew up in the 1970’s took ballet and other classes in that space. The space was renovated in the mid-1980’s.

Removing the materials from the building was physical work for the entire staff. We had movers to get the materials from the old location to the new. The staff however had to physically remove the material from the shelves and either box or place them in rolling containers. I can say now with experience that you don’t need a gym if you are moving a library.

The dedication of the new library will be on Saturday, January 23 at 11:00 a.m. The library will be reopen for business on Monday, January 25, 2010.  It has been exciting to see all the new areas the Tucker library will hold. A few of my favorites are the fireplace, the teen area, the study carrels with their built-in electrical plugs and the wireless network.  The Library has posted many pictures of the new location on our Flickr page.  If you come by the new location, let me know what you like best about the new library. Post your best here, we would love to know what you think.

Today is the anniversary of the birth for two famous Georgians.  These two men made an impact in their respective fields. I knew the first one, Ty Cobb, was from Georgia but I was surprised that Ossie Davis was from Georgia.

Ty Cobb made his impact on the baseball world.  He was born in 1886 in Narrows, Georgia. He was known as the “Georgia Peach” and was considered an outstanding offensive player of all time.  He played for Augusta in the minor South Atlantic League. He set many Major League records. Several are still intact today.  Ty Cobb  was the first man elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame which was established in Cooperstown, Ohio in 1936.

Want to learn more about Ty Cobb? Check out these books.

Ty Cobb by Charles C Alexander

Cobb: a biography by Al Stump

Ossie Davis made an impact in films. He was born in Cogdell Georgia in 1917.  He was known as one of the busiest African-American Entertainers in the 1970’s.  In his career he wrote plays and books. He was a director, playwright and producer. He co-starred in a radio program with his wife in the mid-1970’s.

Want to learn more or see some of Ossie Davis’s work? Check out the following.

Black Directors in Hollywood by Melvin Donaldson

Finding Buck McHenry

Miss Ever’s boys

With Ossie Davis and Ruby: in this life together

Just Like Martin by Ossie Davis

Want more information about these gentleman but can’t get into a library? You can use the Library’s electronic resource, Biography Resource Center. This resource along with other electronic resources can be found on our Reference Database page.

Congratulations to Hightower Elementary School for being the first school in the DeKalb County School System to have all their pre-kindergarten students sign up for library cards! The undertaking was accomplished with the dedication of the pre-k teacher, Elaine Swartley, Hightower’s teacher-librarian, Kia Wansley, as well as the parents and the DeKalb County Public Library System. These people worked together to ensure that these children did not miss out on a free and wonderful opportunity, as children of any age in DeKalb County can receive library cards.

One of the best ways that you, as a parent, teacher, or caregiver can support literacy in children is to encourage them to use the library. The library has thousands of books, reference materials, audiobooks and educational videos as well as internet access and a wide variety of free programs specifically for children and teens.

So what are you waiting for? Stop by your local branch and sign your child up for a Library card today!  Adults may also apply online for a library card.

Just about the last thing I want to do in the summer is fire up the oven, but in cooler weather soup sounds better to me than salad.  There’s always my thrifty Surprise Soup – want the recipe?  Look in the refrigerator, see what’s left over, add chicken broth and if it’s good, surprise! Occasionally I want to make soup that’s a little more, ah, planned. Looking in our catalog for ideas, I found:

Love Soup: 160 all-new vegetarian recipes from the author of The Vegetarian Epicure

A collection of soup recipes, many vegan, from a renowned vegetarian cook. According to the reviews, it includes a pickle soup recipe. I’m not sure I want to eat that but I do want to read the recipe.

An exaltation of soups: the soul-satisfying story of soup, as told in more than 100 recipes

This book comes from a fascinating blog (formerly a website) called SoupSong. Patricia Solley has been writing about soup online for more than 10 years, mixing soup history and local culture in with the recipes. Want to make a soup that’s a little out of the ordinary? Try Yemen’s saltah or a Turkish balik corbasi.

Closer to home, you could head to Buckhead to eat at Souper Jenny, recently featured in the AJC . The article includes some of Jenny Levison’s recipes and we’ve got her cookbook at the Library.

And while you stir, you can sing:

Odd-numbered years bring us off-year elections for mayors, city councils and school boards. These local races address issues closer to a citizen’s daily life than a presidential election (no matter how historic), yet it can be harder to find information about the people running for office. Below is a list of candidates in contested DeKalb County 2009 elections. Candidates with websites are linked.  Biographical information on incumbents can often be found on the respective government website and I’ve linked to those where available. The League of Women Voters Georgia Voters Guide is a great resource for local elections. Sample ballots are at the DeKalb County Voter Registration and Elections website. As always, every vote counts – but maybe even more so in an off-year election.

State Representative in the Georgia General Assembly – District 58

Simone Bell

Asha F. Jackson This is a link to Ms. Jackson’s profile on her law firm’s website.

Kevin Johnson

J. Lewis, IV

Michael McPherson

Read the rest of this entry »

I have always been intrigued by the way people lived back in the “olden” days since I read the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In fact, when I go away for vacation, often it is to an area in the Southeast that offers a look into the “pioneer days”.

If you were around in the 1970’s, you might remember the Foxfire books. There have been twelve volumes that detail all kinds of things that people used to do to survive or live in the past, specifically in the Appalachian range. The books cover subjects from making lye soap to ghost stories, to making jams and jellies.  As a youngster, I remember reading these books. I was fascinated with how they used to do things. (I even talked my mom into making candles and lye soap one time.)  The library has quite a few of these volumes as well as other books about the Appalachian lifestyle.

If  you would like to see live demonstrations on how people in the Southern Appalachian lived, you do not have to drive far to visit a demonstration museum. The Foxfire organization has a demonstration museum located in Rabun County. For more information about the museum and heritage center visit their website.

On a side note, I recently discovered that they have made the Little House on the Prairie books into a musical. It is a traveling show but, unfortunately, the closest it is coming to Atlanta is to Nashville at the end of October.

  Melvil Dewey, author of the Dewey Decimal Classification System, tried to popularize several other unusual organizational schemes (he was an advocate of simplified spelling and spelled his last name ‘Dui’ for a time),  but I don’t think he would have approved of shelving books by color. Of course, Mr. Dewey is not the boss of you (unless you are a librarian) and many people apparently prefer their shelves to look like rainbows. I’ve never tried this myself, but it’s better than the people who secretly hate books (usually decorators) and wrap them all in white. They look like the ghosts of books. Every time I see this, I think “Why do you even own a book? Why not skip the books and go straight to the wallpaper?”

Decatur’s own Blue Elephant Book Shop always has a soothing display of blue books in their front window, which to me shows an admirable and daring disregard for bestsellers.  My current shelving scheme at home is ‘books that are too precious to me to go in the attic’ and ‘books that I put in the attic but miss and fret about’.  How do you shelve your books?

The DeKalb County Public Library system is participating in the Metro Atlanta Solar System (MASS) project. Chris Dupree, a professor of astronomy and director of the Bradley Observatory at Agnes Scott College, created this project.

The MASS project is a scale model of the solar system. The sun is located at the Bradley Observatory plaza at Agnes Scott. The Decatur Library represents the earth. The project uses the same scale for both the planetary size and their distances from the Sun. The scale of the model is approximately 1:150,000,000. Want to know where the other locations are and more about the project? Check out this link to Agnes Scott’s web page.

Interested in learning more about the solar system?

The library has several books about the solar system. We even have the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Astronomy written by Chris Dupree.

Here are a few more you might want to check out.

Lives of the Planets: A natural history of the solar system by R.M. Corfield

The Planets by Dava Sobel

Infinite Worlds: an illustrated voyage to planets beyond our sun. by Ray Villard

Know a child who loves to read? Give them a library book for their birthday by donating to the DeKalb Library Foundation. You can mark a special occasion by having a book plate with their name on it placed in a book purchased for their favorite library. The book plates can also celebrate anniversaries, retirements, weddings or a new baby.  A plate can be in honor of or in memory of a special person. An acknowledgement card is sent to the honoree, noting the occasion and your name.

The first bookplates were also pasted into donated books. In 1480, Brother Hildebrand of Biberach donated his books, accompanied by bookplates, to his monastery. Old bookplates are sought after by collectors and scholars for the beauty of their designs and the information they provide as to the provenance of a book.

What’s provenance? It means knowing the history or origin of an object. Future readers will check your book out from the library and know who made their reading possible. It’s a great gift for any bookworms you might know and a great way to support the Library!

Donation forms are available at your local library or on our website.

The literary world lost a great talent on Thursday July 23rd when E. Lynn Harris suddenly passed away on a train to Los Angeles.  Details of his death are not yet known. The part-time Atlanta resident and best selling author had been on a West coast tour in support of his new novel Basketball Jones.  All ten of his previous novels have hit the New York Times bestseller list.

As a gay man with a tumultuous childhood, Harris often wrote about African-American men who publicly identify themselves as heterosexual but privately sleep with men. In an AJC blog post, Philip Rafshoon, Owner of Outwrite Books in Midtown, recalled  Harris’ early literary career in Atlanta, including him spending $25,000 of his own money to self-publish his debut novel Invisible Life in the early 90s.

Harris was born in Little Rock, AR and called many cities his home during his lifetime, but most recently had been dividing his time between Atlanta and Fayetteville, AR.  In addition, he has often read his works at our library.  You can hear a podcast recording of his last Georgia Center for the Book reading at the Decatur Library by clicking here.