Be Dazzled in the New Year
by Jodi L. Weisz, MLIS, Director
The New Milford Public Library’s Building and Construction Committee has been busy behind the scenes preparing our renovation project’s shovel-in-the-ground start date. When you walk into the Library, you may not “see” all the buzz and effort of this grand project. The “buzz” includes selecting fixtures and furnishings; ensuring ADA compliance; reworking roof “pitch”; laying out specifics for a full-grade temporary operation (with no reduction in quality of services), all located within our current building’s footprint, but subject to “phased moving.”
What we are doing is keeping busy accomplishing all these goals while simultaneously offering our friendly technology training, strong circulation, tantalizing programs, and warm children’s services. Our patrons deserve the best from us, no matter what stage of our revitalization project.
There is no slowing down while anticipating new bid documents, zoning approvals, drainage studies, engineering reports, and façade re-renderings. Just because we are on the verge of a “new look,” a modernized library, doesn’t mean we can take our foot off the petal of robust services for today and every day during our renovation. Think of that popular image circulating on Facebook of librarians on horseback bringing books to rural folks in Kentucky. That’s how we roll. Even in a temporarily reduced footprint, we will still mount each challenge and ensure we provide superior service, with no cut-backs, while our building becomes all that it can be.
New Year’s resolutions teach us we have to keep what is best about ourselves, while reaching for new goals. Blending what is secure, wise, and wonderful while simultaneously preparing to shed, discard, re-vamp, aspire to new habits, and routines is how best to make lasting change. That is what is “happening” at the New Milford Public Library. We have honed in on what is “best” about us, while preparing for what we will become.
All this newness could make for an unnerving ride. But to the seasoned, friendly, and flexible professional staff of the New Milford Public Library, integrating a bigger and bolder vision of what a modernized library is, while maintaining stellar programs, services, and technology goals, it’s a dazzling adventure, indeed!
