As you have no doubt read elsewhere in this paper, the Philip S. Miller Library is moving back downtown. The library, as well as our technical operations and administration, will occupy the old Safeway building on Wilcox. If all goes well, we'll be in there by fall of 2002.

What I'd like to do this week is give some background information. Newspapers tell you what; I'd like to tell you why.

I suppose everybody wonders, eventually, how it was that some human tribes came to gain ascendancy over the others.

For instance, white Europeans enslaved black Africans, and all but exterminated American Indians and Australian aborigines. Just one area of the entire globe, and the Semitic people that lived there, gave birth to Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

One of the oldest unified nations is that of China. Yet Europe still isn't unified, despite the fact that it occupies something like a similar landmass.

Over the past couple of weeks, I attended a couple of events. They belong to completely separate worlds, but somehow I can't stop thinking about them together.

Change is coming (again) to the Parker Library. In 1996, Douglas County voters approved a mill levy increase to expand, renovate, and operate our libraries. At the time, the Parker Library was our newest and largest facility.

Since then, we've just about run out of room.

But our architects did something very smart. In an effort to contain costs, we "banked" some space in the building. Of our 20,000 square feet, we left about 4,000 square unfinished.