Among my jobs is to serve as the library district's "web master." What does that mean? I get to decide how our World Wide Web "pages" will look, how they're organized, and generally, what kind of information or links the public will find there.

Our "home page" (whose location is http://douglas.lib.co.us) provides access to four broad kinds of information:

Shortly after I got out of college but before I found gainful employment, I began to have the most vivid dreams you can imagine. In every one of them, I was called to the desert, a place I had never been.

So I packed my meager belongings into a backpack and bedroll (total weight: 14 pounds), and stuck out my thumb on old Route 66. (This was 20 years ago. I wouldn't recommend it now.)

Two days later, I found myself coming down from the New Mexico mountains into the Sonoran desert at sunrise. I was awed.

This is National Library Week. It's as good a time as any to pass on to Douglas County taxpayers the sort of statistics we gathered for our 1996 annual report to Colorado's State library.

Library patrons. We currently have 83,781 registered borrowers living in Douglas County. That's almost 70% of our 123,000 residents. We have another 5,459 people who live outside the county.

I attended a meeting last week of the Highlands Ranch Development Review Committee. Featured were James Van Hemert of the Douglas County Planning Department, and several people speaking for the Mission Viejo Company, including their consultants, RNL.