Library award winners: past, present and future

From what we can glean from our patron comment slips, we run a pretty tight ship here at the Garland County Library. We receive feedback forms with comments such as,

"Best library in Arkansas!!!"
"a wonderful experience every time me and my family visit"
"Library staff is great! Always very helpful!"
"Miss Tiffany is the best!"

on a regular basis. This is truly one of the more rewarding aspects of our job: knowing that we are doing well by you, the patrons, but it is also very fulfilling to know that our work is being appreciated by the library community as a whole.

Recently two of our library staff have received awards for excellence in service. While they are too modest to go around telling everybody, I have no problem bragging for them. This year, the library has two award winners. Your library director, John Wells, has received the Distinguished Service Award from the Arkansas Library Association for his long and, well, distinguished career at the Garland County Library. Our second award winner is Kim Hillison who has won the Lorrie Shuff Paraprofessional Award for outstanding service. These two fine folks join past Garland County Library award winners Donna Rusher (also winner of the Lorrie Shuff Paraprofessional Award) and Tiffany Hough (winner of the Anne Lightsey Children's Librarian Award).

The library has another potential award winner in its midst. Brook Olsen, library clerk, has entered a video in the "Why I love my library" video contest through the Arkansas Library Association.



The winner of the video contest will be announced during this year's Arkansas Library Association conference in September. We think it is pretty great and we hope you (and the judges) do too!

Labor Day!

image courtesy wikicommons

On Monday, September 5th, the Garland County Library will be closed for Labor Day.

Embarrassingly enough, I was unaware, after all these years, the meaning behind Labor Day. As it turns out, the first Labor Day was celebrated on September 5th, 1882 by the Central Labor Union of New York, which was the first integrated major trade union (Labor Day is always celebrated on the first Monday of September).

Labor Day became a federal holiday under President Grover Cleveland in 1894 after the Pullman Strike.

What was the Pullman Strike? It was the bloodiest and most widely-known strike concerning the railroad. The "wildcat strike" (a strike not authorized by union superiors) originated in Pullman, Illinois after wages were reduced, and included some 3,000 workers, grinding the west side of Chicago to a halt. The number of strikers would grow to 250,000 spanning 27 states at its height.

The bloodbath began after tensions snapped like a rubber band. Companies began hiring strikebreakers, and black workers who feared for their jobs amidst the racial climate crossed the picket lines.

The Central Labor Union, whose leader, Eugene V. Debs (who sympathized and supported the strike), attempted a peaceful gathering in Blue Island, Illinois. Soon afterwards, strikers set fire to buildings and derailed a train. Throughout the United States, strikers and sympathizers began blocking trains, attacking workers, and walking off the job. It became out of hand and the country began asking for government assistance.

Because the strike caused disruptions with the U.S. Mail and threatened public safety, Grover Cleveland sent in 12,000 Army troops and an assortment of U.S. Marshals to take control of the increasingly wild strike.

After all was said and done, 13 strikers were dead and 57 were wounded. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage was caused by the strikers and sympathizers (nearly 9 billion dollars in today's economy).

Enjoy your Labor Day!

School Resources

As you know the school year has begun with students eager to resume their educational careers. The Garland County Library has many resources available to assist students in their learning endeavors. We offer literary classics, books and dvds for help in all subjects and several online databases for library cardholders to use.

The library also offers a large selection of homeschool resource books. If you need information on how to get started homeschooling or where to or how to find homeschool resources, check out our homeschool section. The Children’s library is offering many creative activities for homeschoolers this fall. Homeschool families may also want to check out our booksale room for resources.

GCL to Host Master Gardener Program

The Garland County Library will host a Kitchen and Herb Gardening brown bag lunch presentation by the Garland County Master Gardeners on Friday, August 12^th at 11:30 a.m.

“This will be a great chance to learn how to make sure you have fresh flavors all year round,” Diane Daniel of the Master Gardeners’ education committee said. “We’ll talk about how to choose what herbs to grow for cooking and seasoning and how to take care of them. We’ll also have an herb tasting table so that people can try some things they may not be familiar with.”

Registration is required for the event. Call the library at 623-4161 or 922-4483 to reserve a seat. Participants are encouraged to bring a brown bag lunch. Some beverages will be provided.