Happy Holidays

December has rushed in and the library is doing all it can to look and feel festive. We have decked our halls and added music to our day ( thank you again to the madrical singers who came last tuesday!) The staff has been the lucky recipients of cakes, cookies and candies homemade by patrons and we love it! We wanted to take this time to say how much we love serving you and making sure that you know that nothing would ever change the standards of excellence we hold ourselves to.

As we approach January you may see even more changes being made as we are setting new goals for improving our look and collection. If you have suggestions please feel free to share them with me of in our suggestion box in the entryway. We love feedback of any kind.

My staff and I want to wish each and everyone of you a safe, happy and joyful holiday season.

Maria Meachum

Making New Friends in Wilmington

The past two weeks have whizzed by and my intention to blog more often, while sincere has proven difficult to keep. Already since starting I have met many of the town's citezens, whether it was during Catfish Days where I rode in my first Parade (thank you Community Olds and our our lovely Alderman Darla Neises for the very stylish Convertible) or in our library I have been humbled by the generous welcome. I enjoyed meeting the very dedicated men and women of your local Rotary Club and look forward to participating in the good works they do. Tomorrow I head to my first Community Advisory Panel (CAPS) meeting at the Dow Chemical Wilmington Facility!

Greetings from the new Director!

My name is Maria Meachum and I am the new director of the Wilmington Public Library. I have been a librarian since 1996 and have had the pleasure of working at the Lemont Public Library and the Bellwood Public Library in Adult Services. I received my Masters Degree in Library and Information Science from Dominican University, and have Bachelor's Degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. I have been happily married to my husband, Woody for 12 years and we have two children Abby and Ian. We make our home in Oak Park, where I am lucky to be able to indulge in my other great passion, gardening! I hope that as you come into the library you will take a moment to shake my hand and introduce youselves. I have met several people already but there 9,200 plus more of you to get to know!

After being here just one week I realise I have some big shoes to fill as we send Mary Soucie forward to begin her new journey as the director of Three Rivers Public Library. I appreciate the terrific shape she left this library in and all she did to make the transition smooth! Still, this being my first director position, I am experiencing so many emotions each day; excitement, gratitude, confusion, exhaustion and even melancholy, etc. The melancholy is for the knowing that gone are my days of simply working a busy reference desk and answering the wide variety of questions that reach librarians everyday (fun, interesting and less chaotic than administration.) Confusion for not knowing all the ins and outs of this new town and library, when I am used to knowing it all about the town I work in. Exhaustion for the the hours I have spent both at the library, and at my home in Oak Park, studying up on things I want to learn about the town and the library. But overriding it all is the excitement to be the captain of this great team, and gratitude for the faith that the Board has placed in me to keep your library running well and living up to its already sterling reputation. I promise you I will do my very best to make sure that faith is not misplaced. I hope you will check in on this blog as I will be making it my journal for this new career. and as a record of things I discover about Wilmington you may not know yourselves!

National Library Week Celebration

Greetings! We invite you to participate in our National Library Week Celebration. NLW is April 12-18. Anyone that comes in dressed for the theme will get a small prize; they will also have a chance to enter for a daily prize and then a grand prize!

Themes are:

Monday – Crazy Hat Day

Tuesday – Decades Day

Wednesday – Favorite Book Character

Thursday – Mismatch

Friday – Sports Day

Come in each day to see how the staff celebrates the daily theme!

New opportunity

It is with sincere regret and sadness that I tendered my resignation to the library board on Monday, March 16th. My last day at Wilmington PLD will be May 12, 2009.

I have made many friends during my tenure at WPLD! I will miss my wonderful staff and patrons. I will also miss my Rotary and Chamber colleagues.

I would like to thank the Friends of the Wilmington Library for all that they do for our libary. This dedicated group of individuals recently donated over $3000 to the library for the purchase of new materials and tables for our meeting room. I would like to encourage everyone to consider joining the Friends group. They meet the second Tuesday of the month at 6:30 in the library's community room.

I will always value the time spent at the library in my community! We have made a lot of changes in 8 years. I look forward to working with the new director as a colleague and as a patron, as I will still be living in Wilmington.

The Board of Trustees will begin the search for a new director right away. I hope that you will welcome and support the new director as much as I was welcomed and supported!

I will start my new job as Executive Director of the Three Rivers Library District in Channahon/Minooka on May 18th. Feel free to drop in and see me there.

Thank you for being such a wonderful community of library supporters!

Joliet Herald Newspaper Article

Thanks to Mary Baskerville for the great article she wrote about the library! There are also three pictures with the article.

Visit http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/news/1459754,4_5_JO05_WILLIB_S1.article to read about how your local library is filling a need in the current economic climate.

Newspaper column

Greetings! I am very excited to announce that beginning in March, I will have a monthly column in the Free Press newspaper to promote library services and programs. Please keep your eyes open for it!

Some services I'd like to highlight:

Carry Out @ your library- we'll bring the books right out to you -or- bag them up and you can run in and get them

Notary and Voter's Registration- we currently have 3 of each on staff

Our website- from the website you can search the library's catalog, place holds, renew materials or just review what you have checked out; you can email or Instant Message staff; you can search our online resources (also known as databases) for all sorts of information, review and register for programs and much, much more. Check out our "virtual library" at http://www.wilmingtonlibrary.org.

New formats I'd like to briefly highlight:

Playaways- similiar to an MP3 player, these are audiobooks pre-loaded onto a small device about the size of a deck of cards. Better than a book on CD or tape because you don't have to stop and change them out- you just press play and stop!

Watch the paper and the blog for more highlights!

Thanks for reading and keep warm!

Mary S.