It was a whirlwind trip to Red Cliff this month, in which we met with some awesome new folks and made great headway in the library. For some of us, this was our first trip to Red Cliff, so we had some catching up to do. Boris Frank, who has done a tremendous amount of foundational work pulling together information for future grants, brought us up to speed on his findings when we arrived late on Thursday night. Thanks to all of his hard work and research, we are now stocked with background information for drafting grant applications.
Friday we had a full day, checking out the Richie Plass exhibit, then meeting with Hope Mayotte, Red Cliff’s grant writer and Dee Gokee-Rindal, the Education Division Administrator, to talk through the future plans, both for the Interim Library and the Cultural Center in the long term. We have quite a way to go in before we reach our final goal, but seeing the plans in greater detail and feeling the excitement and enthusiasm from everyone involved, determined to see it though, is great motivation to charge on with the next steps.
We were especially excited to meet Nancy Newago the new librarian! Nancy has a background in early childhood education, is well connected in the community, and has a fun sense of humor. She’s worthy of the challenge for a grassroots project like this. She dove right in to the project and by the time this blog post hits the internet she will be taking a distance class in library management.
Working swiftly with the limited time we had, we were able to unpack more boxes, scan books into the LibraryThing catalog and get them on the shelves.
We left feeling inspired to forge ahead on some of our projects to support this library, including researching and drafting library policies, completing the READ posters started last year, and assisting with grants.
Mark your calendars! There will be a grand opening on April 18.
-Red Cliff Group