In the beginning, there was an empty room.
It was not always empty. It used to be full of books, computers, and activity, when the public library ran a combined school and community library at the school.
Now the public library has its own bookmobile (in the school’s parking lot) and the school is creating its own library from scratch.
This is one of my jobs. I travel to four different libraries a week, and this is the one – at the Alta Elementary School, a Blue Ribbon school in Alta, Wyoming – is the newest, and the farthest away. It is an hour and a half from where I live, each way, over the Teton Pass. I am a teacher-librarian, which means I teach library classes most of the time, but the other job is managing the libraries, which takes about as much time, or more (especially in libraries that are new, or need some good old-fashioned fixing).
When school began, furniture had not arrived as promised. We finally got tables a few weeks into the school year, but no shelves – they were delayed and delayed. But the walls were painted!
A view of the library after one shipment of the furniture finally arrived…
