Staff

Welcome...

I have been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1987.

For 3 years, it ran in the Greeley Tribune. Since then, it has run in various subsidiaries of the Douglas County News Press. I still have most of my columns in digital format.

For many years, I only gave myself one rule: try to work the word "library" into every piece. My intent was to think in public about just what librarianship means at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st.

July 1, 2010 - library proud of returning soldier

Dean Ruppelt is a patriot.

He served in the Army Reserves from 1982-1987. He served another stint in the Navy from 1987-1991. In September of 2007, he joined the National Guard.

In August of 2008 he got married (on 08/08/08, in fact - a brilliant stratagem to make the date itself memorable.)

And on January 2009, he got called up.

At Fort Hood he got two months training. He left for Kuwait at the end of June, where he got two more week's training, this time in dealing with IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices).

On July 12, 2009, he arrived in Iraq.

March 11, 2010 - it was 20 years ago today

"It was 20 years ago today
Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play."

I have now held my position as director of Douglas County's libraries for 20 years. It was a different world back then.

The population of Douglas County in 1990 was about 65,000. We checked out 368,492 items a year. Today, we have close to 300,000 people, and check out nearly 8 million items annually.