This week, my wife is in England. Suzanne and her father have relatives back there, and my father-in-law, now in his seventies, got the itch to go. When he wistfully suggested that perhaps Suzanne would like to go along, I encouraged her to go for it - an opportunity not only to get to know him better, but also for her to return, for a time, to her globe trotting youth.

So I'm spending the week looking after the kids and being a house-husband.

You want to know what gives librarians nightmares? 16 millimeter films.

There was a time when forward-thinking libraries the nation round built up impressive collections of such films. Suddenly: videos. I've worked in libraries where it took years to finally purge the final 16 mm metal casing, and make way for the new format.

The Douglas Public Library District now has quite a good collection of videos. We have tens of thousands of them. You see where I'm heading?

DVDs.

I've worked in and around libraries most of my life, since I founded the Library Club in 7th grade (it sounds a little geeky now, but there you have it) until the dawn of the new millennium. But I, too, am always finding out new things about what a library does.

One of the head-scratching realizations of advancing age is that sometimes good people have honest disagreements with each other.

For the past several years now, the Douglas Public Library District has been working with Shea Homes and the Highlands Ranch Metropolitan Districts (HRMD) to jointly create a Town Center. All of the land once belonged to Shea, although the company has deeded parcels, free of charge, to the library and to HRMD.