Coffee Table - 9/16/2026 - Homer Public Library, 20 years in the new buiding

Let's jump back to the first area of subject.

I wanted to talk about the inventory and services that the library has traditionally offered going all the way back.

So in addition to letting books and providing a place for people to spend time reading them, what other services did the library get into and when? Do we know?

Well, the farther back you go, the sort of sketchier the record gets.

But it's always provided books.

It's always provided magazines and newspaper, periodical access.

I know that there was a big push in the 70s and 80s to get microfilm.

partly as a way to save space because, like I say, it was very crowded.

They did introduce computerized services.

There was a magazine index that they were very proud of that had 370 magazine titles in it.

And this is pretty early on.

This is about the early 80s.

And it was kind of like a proto-internet.

You could look up magazine articles and just read them off the computer.

And of course, you know, internet access has been a big thing.

Nowadays, we check out DVDs.

We have streaming videos online.

We have e-books and e-audiobooks and e-magazines that you can all read just off of a website.

We provide all of that.

We provide lots of programs, of course, if you want to come in to story time and find a place to store your children briefly.

Things like that.

I don't know.

What else do we do?

We used to have things like punch bowls and, you know, things like that, which I always, you know, that was always a closet of things back there that you could take out of the library.

Speaking of things, you have a library of things.