2011, 2012: big years of the library

This year has been a history-making year for the Delaware County Dis­trict Library, on many dif­fer­ent fronts. The open­ing of the long-awaited Orange Branch cer­tainly changed the his­tory and the future of the library, and you have fully embraced the facil­ity, its ser­vices and its staff. Since it opened, the staff at the Orange Branch has issued nearly 10,000 new library cards, and you have checked out more than 170,000 books, DVDs, mag­a­zines and audio books. We could not be more pleased with the suc­cess of this beau­ti­ful and wel­com­ing new facility!

An addi­tional mile­stone of 2011 is yet another record-breaking year in cir­cu­la­tion, not sur­pris­ing with the open­ing of the new branch. But, you con­tinue to visit all of the library’s facil­i­ties, includ­ing the WOW-Mobile, and the num­ber of check-outs is near­ing 1,260,000 this year, a 25 per­cent increase over 2010.

Part of the increase in cir­cu­la­tion is the result of the library adding SearchOhio to its tool­box to help you find exactly what you need when­ever you visit us. SearchOhio is a resource-sharing coop­er­a­tive among 20 pub­lic and 90 aca­d­e­mic libraries, pro­vid­ing access to more than 9.5 mil­lion items to Delaware Library users, with just a key­stroke. Along with join­ing SearchOhio, the library also increased the mate­ri­als bud­get by almost 30 per­cent, adding more best sell­ers, block­busters and other titles to the library’s shelves.

The new year is already crowded with plans to ren­o­vate the Pow­ell Branch and the Delaware (Main) Library; devel­op­ing, with com­mu­nity input, a revised strate­gic plan to give us a bet­ter roadmap for future growth; adding self-check-out and self-pick-up of holds at library loca­tions; and con­tin­u­ing to update tech­nol­ogy, includ­ing bandwidth.

The Delaware County Dis­trict Library cel­e­brates these suc­cesses, and we thank you for mak­ing it pos­si­ble through your con­tin­ued support.

Happy and safe New Year to you all!

What are the nick­names for mar­bles and where did they come from?

Accord­ing to Sports and Games of the 18th and 19th Cen­tury, mar­bles usu­ally earn their nick­name based upon what they look like, what they’re used for, or the mate­r­ial used to make them. For exam­ple, “aggies” are mar­bles that are made from agate, a type of stone. An “alley” can be a mar­ble made of alabaster, but it can also be another term for a “shooter” or “taw,” the large mar­ble used to knock around the smaller ones, which are some­times called “mibs” or “ducks.” “Bum­ble­bees” are yel­low and black striped. “Jaspers” are com­mon, blue mar­bles made from glazed or unglazed china. “Onion­skins” are glass mar­bles with swirls of lay­ered col­ors that extend over the length of the mar­ble. “Sul­phides” are semi-opaque glass mar­bles that usu­ally con­tain a small fig­ure in the middle—an ani­mal, a char­ac­ter or a real per­son. If you can spot any of these mar­bles on sight, you’re prob­a­bly a “mib­ster,” a term for some­one who plays marbles.

What is a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability?

The Kelvin–Helmholtz insta­bil­ity can occur when veloc­ity shear is present within a con­tin­u­ous fluid, or when there is suf­fi­cient veloc­ity dif­fer­ence across the inter­face between two flu­ids. One exam­ple is wind blow­ing over a water sur­face, where the wind causes the rel­a­tive motion between the strat­i­fied lay­ers, water and air. The insta­bil­ity will man­i­fest itself in the form of waves being gen­er­ated on the water sur­face, as noted in The Gale Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence. The waves can appear in numer­ous flu­ids and have been spot­ted in clouds, Saturn’s bands, waves in the ocean, and in the sun’s corona.

Why do we call an unwanted gift a “white elephant?”

A white ele­phant is an idiom for a valu­able but bur­den­some pos­ses­sion of which its owner can­not dis­pose and whose cost (par­tic­u­larly cost of upkeep) is out of pro­por­tion to its use­ful­ness or worth. The term derives from the story that the kings of Siam (now Thai­land) were accus­tomed to mak­ing a present of one of a white ele­phant to courtiers who had ren­dered them­selves obnox­ious, in order to ruin the recip­i­ent by the cost of its main­te­nance. In mod­ern usage, it is an object, scheme, busi­ness ven­ture, facil­ity, and so forth, con­sid­ered to be with­out use or value. This infor­ma­tion was found in The Oxford Dic­tio­nary of Phrase, Say­ing and Quotation.

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 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions at delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Dec 31 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.