The ever present TV / computer

When putting together our webpage about Turn off Your Television Week, I came across a social group whose mission is to get people to turn off their televisions every week. Their quizzes about media and television addiction are included on our page.

For someone like myself who is a media addict (mostly computer, very little tv), some of the questions are almost laughable: do you have a tv in your bedroom (uh.. who doesn't?), can you tell time by what tv show is on (um.. yeah, giggle.) But others are kind of not so funny: do you watch tv/spend time on a computer more than you talk to your family? (um.. heh.)

It's really easy to get carried away in our hobbies, especially when they seem more compelling than other, boring things. I know most of the people I hang out with online say this is their socially interactive alternative to just watching TV. Is it better? Perhaps. Is it still keeping us indoors, breathing stale lint bunnies instead of fresh prairie air? Yeah.

The staff at the Jasper County Library has made an effort again this year to bring you a week of quality family events you can do instead of hang out around the flickering screen. Whether you choose to spend this week with us or doing something else exciting in the wonderful weather, we hope you spend it well.

Even just one week of vacation away from our social addictions can give us a new look on things.

Local History: "The past is a gift to the future"

With all the excitement from CIL fading a bit, I wanted to get back to something amazing and local I learned about before I left.

Earlier this month, the Rensselaer Ladies Literary Society hosted Brian Capouch, who talked about the work he has been doing restoring old buildings and houses in the Jasper, Pulaski and White county areas.

Capouch, a professor at St. Joseph's College, has discovered quite a lot about Jasper County history through his research on his own properties and on properties he drives by that pique his interest.

He has uncovered stories about homes in the area that used to be stops on the underground railroad, and homes that belonged to Jasper County's first white settlers. He also shared the story of a town that might have become the county seat -- as it had the first blacksmith shop, first school and first store -- if the railroad hadn't come through a little farther southwest than the little town at the fork of the Iroquois and Pinkamink rivers, an area known today as Pleasant Grove.

Capouch said he considers these lonely old homes and sites in rural areas just as valuable as any big-city preservation site for the history they have seen, and more at risk, often because the land is considered more valuable as farm ground than as a home or a historic site.

Capouch said he learned a hard lesson early on in his restoration work, when he discovered the log cabin his family had built. Going on with the new owner about how he could restore the property, he failed to notice how his intentions were not being welcomed, he said. A few days later, the home burned to the ground.

Since then, he said he tries to offer assistance and to convince property owners to consider the possible return on investment of restoration as opposed to letting the home deteriorate and be razed. Sometimes, he has paid out of his own pocket for stopgap measures on other people's property, such as to repair windows to buy a home a few more years. "If you can keep the rain out, keep the animals out, then you can keep these homes going," he said.

Capouch has also started a website about his work, http://www.oldmedaryville.org/. The photo galleries are especially interesting.

The title for this blog post came from Capouch's site. As a fan of history, I couldn't agree more with the sentiment.

CIL websites from day 1

Just a random list of websites from my notes, day 1

Keynote Speaker: Lee Rainey, Pew Internet and American Life Project

Dewey & Main - Presenter, "Going Local in the Library"

Placeblogger - blogs about locations

Everyblock - News about your block, experimental project in New York, Chicago and San Fransisco, maybe coming soon to a street near you

Presenter Beth Galloway's slides, "Digital Convergence and People Apps"

infodoodads.com - Presenters from "The Global Librarian: Online Social Networks"

Chow Hound - Food and restaurant search engine

GetClicky.com - Website statistics

Problogger - Blog promotion tips and tricks

Sortfix - A visual way to improve your searching techniques

Learning and sharing

Striving to stay on top of the latest technology and info, JCPL staff have headed to two conferences in recent days. Last week members visited the national PLA conference to bring back ideas to improve our library services. This week, our tech-oriented staff is visiting Computers in Libraries, where we will hear about the cutting edge in Internet and computer use.

Our keynote, Monday, day one of the conference, is "Libraries Solve Problems," and it's a really nice reminder of our mission as a library professional. We are the place where the community can come for books, for movies, for computer use, but we are also the place where the community comes to learn. We're proud to keep learning new ways to help you do just that.