LIBRARY TALK – NOVEMBER 2, 2023

This flood photograph that was donated to the library. What intrigued us was the store to the right, probably the Paeltz Hardware Store. According to a long article in the December 10th 1936 Ripley Bee the store was having a closeout sale and then the first floor of the building was going to be leased to the Kroger Grocery January 1st of 1937. (Kroger’s was already in town in a different building) This flood might have been the March 1936 flood, which, according to the Bee, had half of the business section on Main Street under water. Of course, nothing compared to the 1937 flood. Paeltz Hardware was in business from 1922-1936.

Most librarians have a variety of tools that they use to select titles to add to the collection, but some of the more interesting titles come from requests or ideas from patrons. We are in a consortium of over 250 libraries, so we wonder if none of the other libraries own, should we become the first? Sure, why not, not only do we think about our own patrons, but our family of libraries. We know we’ve hit on something when holds pop up on the title—might not even be a brand-new book, just not in the system until we purchase. Current requests/purchases include Complete Guide of Seed and Nut Oils: Growing, Foraging and Processing by Cohen covers small scale production of oils from a wide variety of sources—the expected such as peanuts, but also more unusual—pumpkin seed oil and okra seed oil. Dolores Cannon, an author we were not very familiar with, was brought to our attention because a patron had been waiting for months for one of the few books by her that was in our system. We purchased that book, (They Walked with Jesus, Past Life Experiences with Christ) plus a few other titles that were not in our system, and all have holds on them now. Dolores is known for her books on reincarnation, past-life regression through hypnosis, throw in a little alien abduction discussion along with metaphysics and you’ll see she isn’t a typical author. Another book that is 5 years old but has a high demand so we purchased a copy to help the hold load is Self Heal by Design: The Role of Microorganisms in Healing by Barbara O’Neill. When a hot book comes out, most libraries purchase a copy, so there might be 300 holds, but there are 150 copies of the book, so the ratio isn’t too bad, but when there are more than 50 holds on a book and there are only one or two copies..the wait can be unreasonably long. We can’t fix everything, but trust us, we do make the effort to help our patrons as well as the system whole.