Parking challenge at main branch

With the num­ber of items checked out in 2010 top­ping 1,062,000, the Delaware County Dis­trict Library is a very busy place. About 7000 peo­ple walk through the doors of the Delaware Branch every week, to check out items, use the com­put­ers, read, study, relax, and oth­er­wise take advan­tage of the ser­vices offered. As happy as we are to be such a vital asset to the Delaware com­mu­nity, being so busy comes with its own set of prob­lems, specif­i­cally park­ing challenges.

As a down­town busi­ness, the Library is for­tu­nate to have its own ded­i­cated park­ing lot; most other busi­nesses rely on street park­ing and pub­lic park­ing lots. How­ever, find­ing a spot to park in our lot can some­time be a real chal­lenge, espe­cially dur­ing the times when the Library is offer­ing story times or other pro­grams. The Board of Trustees has inves­ti­gated sev­eral dif­fer­ent options to expand the park­ing sit­u­a­tion, but no good, cost effec­tive solu­tion has emerged. Cer­tainly, the open­ing of the Orange Branch next month will bring some relief to the park­ing prob­lems at the Delaware Branch. Undoubt­edly, dozens of peo­ple who use the down­town branch will find the Orange Branch more con­ve­nient, and there are about 100 park­ing spaces in that facility’s lot.

I receive sev­eral com­ments about the lack of park­ing at the Delaware Branch every week, and I apol­o­gize for your incon­ve­nience. Peo­ple fre­quently come and go at the Library, with park­ing spaces open­ing up quite often, and remem­ber that there is quite a bit of on-street part­ing sur­round­ing the Library, too.

I cer­tainly hope that the occa­sional chal­lenge in find­ing a park­ing spot will not deter you from vis­it­ing the Library. Your patience will almost always be rewarded with a park­ing spot becom­ing available.

Why do worms come onto dri­ve­ways and side­walks when it rains?

Accord­ing to Tun­nel­ing Earth­worms, worms do not sur­face to avoid drown­ing. In fact, they come to the sur­face dur­ing rains so they can move over­land. The tem­porar­ily wet con­di­tions give worms a chance to move safely to new places. Since worms breathe through their skin, the skin must stay wet in order for the oxy­gen to pass through it. After rain and dur­ing high humid­ity are safe times for worms to move around with­out dehy­drat­ing. It is true that, with­out oxy­gen, worms will suf­fo­cate, but earth­worms can sur­vive for sev­eral weeks under water, pro­vid­ing there is suf­fi­cient oxy­gen in the water to sup­port them.

Why do movies use fake 555 numbers?

To curb these nui­sance calls to real num­bers from curi­ous view­ers, movies and shows have been using the fake 555 num­bers since as far back as the 1950s. It is dif­fi­cult to deter­mine exactly how 555 became the pre­ferred fake pre­fix for phone num­bers. In the book Easy as Pi: The Count­less Ways We Use Num­bers Every Day, author Jamie Buchan spec­u­lates that the repeated digit may have made the com­bi­na­tion mem­o­rable, which helped it gain trac­tion. Buchan adds that no major place names in the United States began with a com­bi­na­tion of the let­ters J, K, and L (the let­ters assigned to the 5 key on a phone).

Has any base­ball player ever hit the score­board at Wrigley Field?

Wrigley Field’s 89-foot score­board was built in 1937 under the direc­tion of club trea­surer and future White Sox owner Bill Veeck, whose father was team pres­i­dent until he died in 1933. Most of the orig­i­nal Wrigley Field score­board, which still stands today, is man­u­ally oper­ated, but the batter’s num­ber, balls, strikes, and outs are dis­played elec­tron­i­cally in the cen­ter por­tion of the board. As noted in The Story of the Chicago Cubs, the orig­i­nal con­trol panel is still in use. While no base­ball player has man­aged to hit the score­board, golfer Sam Snead cleared it with a drive from home plate in 1951. Accord­ing to news­pa­per accounts, Snead hit the score­board with a 4-iron before clear­ing it with a 2-iron.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call us at 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!