Sudoku was a foreign concept to me; I couldn’t understand why people were obsessed with filling in crossword puzzles made up of numbers. I’m not much of a mathematician and I was convinced Sudoku was a math game. Being stranded in eastern Washington 100 miles from the nearest town led me to give Sudoku a try and I’ve been hooked ever since. It’s all about logic and as a librarian and trainer, I do love logic games. One of the…
(Photo courtesy Washington State Library) For the past several years, a program coordinated by our State Library has helped libraries, museums and other cultural institutions in rural communities organize and digitize historical photos, texts, scrapbooks, maps and other items documenting early culture and community life in Washington. This program, called Washington Rural Heritage, provides these photos and documents for the public to view, for free. The program has helped fund the addition of a project that helps tell the history…
(Photo courtesy of City of Zillah) If you’ve driven from Yakima to the Tri-Cities or if you’ve done a wine-tasting tour in the Yakima Valley, chances are you’ve been through Zillah, a town of roughly 3,000 inhabitants in south-central Washington. Zillah is in beautiful Yakima County, known for more than two dozen local wineries and vineyards. Zillah (pronounced ZIL-uh) was named by Yakima Valley irrigation pioneer Walter N. Granger, president of the Yakima Land and Canal Company. One of the…
From the desk of Steve Willis, Central Library Services Program Manager of the Washington State Library: Time has rewarded the Dutchman who ran the potato-bug newspaper, while The Argus is now mostly a political footnote in Washington State political history. The election of 1896 was preceded by one of the most emotionally charged campaigns in the history of the United States. William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic and Populist parties nominee, had excited a large portion of the agrarian and Western population…
Gov. Jay Inslee and legislative leaders from both parties and both houses on Thursday announced the good news that had eluded them for weeks — a budget deal that will avert a partial government shutdown. The state is closer to the budget deadline than ever before — and the phrase “government shutdown” had moved into the state lexicon as anxious state employees, their managers and the public wondered if it could happen here. With just three days before the June…
From the desk of Steve Willis, Central Library Services Program Manager of the Washington State Library: In the summer of 2002 I was given an assignment that turned out to be a career highlight for me as a cataloger to use my vast powers for Good. The task was to make the Washington State Library Territorial Collection the subject of a recon project, i.e., adding the 400+ titles (800+ volumes) to the online catalog. Providing bibliographic access to the oldest library…
One of the highlights of working in our office is seeing the flow of visitors to the Capitol, not only from our state but from around America and the world. The latest example is a group of 20 female student leaders from five Central Asian nations who stopped by our office Wednesday morning during their daytrip to Olympia . The students, from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are in Washington to participate in the 2013 Study of the United…
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Library News Star Wars Stormtroopers, balloon animals, music and a stilt walker were just a few of the many things that happened on Saturday, May 11th at the Camas Public Library. The event was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the opening of the newly remodeled and expanded library. (Photo) (Camas-Washougal Post-Record, 5.7.13) http://www.camaspostrecord.com/news/2013/may/07/library-celebrates-10th-anniversary/ One book challenged by a social studies teacher will remain in school libraries, but the fate of another is not yet entirely decided. The Prosser School…
(Photo courtesy of Washington State Digital Archives) With summer supposedly here (Sunday night’s drenching around Olympia suggests otherwise), many of us will be looking for excuses to be outdoors and enjoy the warmer weather. Whether you’re part of a couple, a family or a group of friends, a picnic in a park on a nice day is hard to beat. That was the case 100 years ago, as shown in the photo of a group picnicking at Manito Park in…