Tuesday, June 07, 2005

The library of persistent listening

One day persistent listening will make it possible for Tiskilwa, my home town, to have a new, accessible library.

Four years ago the board (I'm currently president) set a goal of an cretaing an accessible library that will serve our village for the next fifty years.

We currently have a small library with a dozen steps to get to the door.

In my February 10 blog I was excited because a bank had offered to donate their Tiskilwa branch office to the library. But an architectural study showed that making the bank into a libray was going to cost us between $300,000 and $500,000. We could probably build an energy efficient new library for $400,000.

Last night the board voted to decline the gift of the bank building.

A couple weeks ago I visited with Bruce McVety, a former library board member, and he suggested approaching the village board about them village donating part of one of the parks for a new library.

This morning I phoned the mayor who's open to the idea but he wants to know exactly how much of the park we need.

Now it's time to listen to a consultant from the regional library system who will be able to give us an idea of how much of the park we will need.

When it's complete it might well be called a library of persistent listening because, as a board, we will have collected a ton of ideas in order to create a library that will serve Tiskilwa for the next fifty years.