A new year and a new look for the Irish Room!

 

Welcome to our inaugural blog post from the Irish Room.

Before I start telling you about what’s happening in the Irish Room, first let me say: Happy Little Christmas to all you ladies out there!

Our Chapter Treasurer, Mary Beth, dropped into the Irish Room today and she and I were chatting about today being Little Christmas, or ‘Women’s Christmas’ as it is also known in Ireland.  January 6^th, or Epiphany in the church calendar, is the day when the women of the community finally get to take a break after taking care of hearth and home all year and finishing off with shouldering most of the planning, preparation and carrying out of tasks associated with the Christmas celebrations.  

Little Christmas marks the end of the 12 days of Christmas which begin on St. Stephen's Day (December 26th) and, all over Ireland, you will find the pubs filled with women enjoying their time off while the men remain at home, remove the final Christmas decorations, clean the house, look after the children and cook the meals.  Great idea!

Mary Beth recalled the year that she, Roly and their daughter Kathleen were living in Ireland and how the men in the community gathered up all of the women and dropped them off at a nice restaurant for a good meal, a wee drink and a sharing of stories. The men then retreated to the homes to take care of their assigned tasks, returning to the restaurant to pick the women up and drop them off at their local pub for the rest of the day.  At the end of the day, with the women happy and energized by their pleasant break with their good friends and neighbours, the men would return, totally exhausted from their day (poor dears!) to pick the women up and bring them home if their ‘local’ was not within walking distance of their home.  What a wonderful tradition!

 Here in Canada, for a number of years,  Bruce and I would invite our neighbours and friends over for a Little Christmas potluck.  The men were required to each bring a small wrapped gift for a woman and it was their responsibility to cook whatever dish they were bringing for the potluck.  Once they arrived at our house they looked after serving food and drink to us ladies all evening and did the clean up and dish washing before the evening was over.  Not quite as nice as the Irish way but it served us well for several years.  Hmm, we should definitely start that back up again, I think. 

Meanwhile…back at the farm...or, in this case, the Irish Room, we are excited to be planning some big changes for 2024 to hopefully entice more of you to come in for a visit. 

First, we are totally revamping the way we shelve and display our books to make it easier to find something that appeals to you.  By using what libraries call 'dynamic shelving' instead of the traditional static shelving, not only will it be a more attractive and comfortable way to browse our shelves but it should be way easier to find something that interests you.  

Besides the more attractive way of shelving the books and magazines, the fiction and non-fiction areas will be rearranged by genre instead of that pesky numerical or alphabetical system.  Yes, within a genre we will still have the authors grouped alphabetically but the new arrangements will be much simpler and will make it easier to find your favourite author or subject. We will also spend the time to weed out a number of pieces from the collection which we feel may not serve our purpose or, I should say, the needs of our patrons.

It does look like Maeve Binchy may need to have a couple of shelves entirely for her own - also authors like Patrick Taylor, Roddy Doyle, Joseph Connor, among others.  *smile*

So, I spent the day today beginning to empty the shelves and sort the books into genres.  

Damien, our resident evil, red-eyed bunny was keeping an eye on me  as I began the laborious task of emptying the bookcases and stacking books by category in preparation for reshelving using the new system.  He wasn’t pleased at all to find theses shelves looking so bare.  See that angry glare on his face??

He did seem a little happier to see the stacks of books of varying heights which appeared to be a veritable playground for bunnies to hop around on.  But, then again, who knows what goes on in the mind of evil, red-eyed bunnies?

 If you think you’d like to give a wee hand sorting the books, rearranging a few things and weeding out things we don’t need, please pop in on Thursday or Saturday between 10 am and 2 pm and we will be sure to put you to work!

As the weeks progress our small band of volunteer librarians, Bruce, Susan and myself, will try to post a new blog entry once a week to let you know how we are progressing with the revamp and to bring items of interest to your attention.  Don't forget to check out the Capital Area Chapter Facebook page for other items of interest and events taking place.

Also, if you have any comments or suggestions for us here at the Irish Room, be sure to let us know in the comment section.  I'm not positive but I think you need to be signed into your Google account to leave a comment?  I'll have to check that out.  

So - until next week - stay warm, dry and safe and Come Visit Us!!  We'll make sure to control Damien while you're there.  

- your friendly volunteer librarian #2 - Marilyn    (Bruce and Susan - I arbitrarily numbered us alphabetically in case you're wondering how I got to be #2 *smile*)