When we work in the public library, we never know who’s going to come through that main gate, never know what questions they will ask you. One day, a young boy of 8-9 years old came to our library, although he was hanging around in the last winter to complete some of his science project of his school, came to me and asked a usual question. Said, “I have an Idea…! I do check out a room today for a week and I have been scoping the space out and you have a story hour room, which is now not used by you all. If you permit, I will put up a puppet program for kids and parents in the coming Friday.

What do you think..?? It’s an unusual question. And I clicked through my mind as to, “Well, what could possible get wrong? I said Okey to it, lets do it…! There he was. He came on Friday morning, set up the stage and gathered some 35 kids and their family for his show. He did a lovely puppet show. The kids clapped and he was happy..

Thereafter he left and we didn’t see him for a couple of  weeks. One fine Saturday afternoon, he came with his dad. He came to my desk and said, Today is my birthday…my dad shifted his job to another city and I am going to miss this library and in all the places in the world, the place that I wanted to come most of the time was the library and I wanted to say Thankyou and Godbye and they left.

My point to the above story is that, all over the world…libraries are adopting to meet their communities need and they are different in different communities. While going through an article in a newspaper, I came to know that in London, they have completely rebranded libraries. They call them the “IDEA STORE”.. Isn’t it interesting!!! where people can come in, have a cup of coffee and shop for an idea. Libraries are place where you can create and collaborate. We used to rely on books but now we know that people have different learning styles.

Hope I was not boring you out from my long text. Its time to renovate ourselves for the betterment of our profession.

regards,

Ajit P