An Introduction, Including a Bit of a Confession

There are certain aspects of blogging about which I’ve been curious for some time.  Early internet visionaries promised a communications revolution. The mode of many-to­-many would first subvert, and then overthrow, the regime of one, or at least the few. Twentieth-century media monopolies and their restrictive points of view were doomed.

There have been changes. There are now many ways to log in and add your voice to the discourse du jour. But are many really communicating to many?  Or is the one-to-many model more difficult to transcend than we first supposed?

I haven’t checked the statistics but my guess is that there are many blogs read only by the blogger who wrote them and maybe a few close personal friends or family members. The many are relatively few. On the other hand, some bloggers have thousands of followers but that doesn’t exactly subvert the dominant paradigm. Either way, much of what’s communicated often doesn’t seem to have been worth sending.

So, it is with some trepidation and not a little outright fear that I begin this modest enterprise. I’m wondering if I really have anything useful to say. Will anybody read it? If they do, will it make a difference? Uncertainty makes me nervous.

Anyhow, here I go.

It is my good fortune to be the Director of the Marion Public Library, and from time to time, I’ll talk about the library and what’s happening here, but frankly, we have other outlets to do that, including other parts of the Marion Patch! Watch for those, if you would.

Most of the time I’m going to talk about the things that interest me about books, music, movies, art and all the other things that we have in the library for your enjoyment and enlightenment. It really gives me a wide range of things to cover.

And I invite you to respond to what you read here. An important purpose of libraries is to provide a place where a community comes together, get to know itself, and grows strong.

This blog, and Marion Patch, allows me to extend into cyberspace a warm and comfy place you already know about -- your Marion Public Library. Thanks for your continued use and support of your library. We try hard to make it what you need it to be. It’s our prime directive.