 Hi, welcome to Portland Media Center's member highlight, one of the benefits for our non-profit members. Today I'm at Mechanics Hall in the beautiful library with the new librarian, Jules Olson. Hi Jules. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, well we're glad you're here and there have been a lot of changes in the library over the last year and a half or so and we're going to talk a little bit about that. Great. But first the Mechanics Institution, the main charitable Mechanics was the original name I guess, started in 1815. That's right, yeah. But there was no building. Right, they built the building in 1856, 1857. And originally the library was on the first floor and then it moved up here to the second floor and we've been here ever since. And the library served a really important purpose for the tradespeople, the craftsmen of the area at that time. And today still, but a little bit more then, can you explain a little bit about why it was so important? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the reasons for the founding of the main charitable Mechanics Association was to give their junior members an opportunity for more education, both within their trades and sort of what we think of now as a liberal arts education. So that's always been an important piece of Mechanics Hall and that's still a piece of it today. Absolutely. Right. And SMCC, it's the main community college, is still an active member or a participant in some of the things we do here. They're tradespeople I think they have who have received scholarships from here in drafting in the past and now it's on the computer. Is that still being done? Well there was the architectural drawing school, is that what you were thinking of? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, so that ran for decades here and then of course once things moved to the computers, that was sort of the end of the hand drawing. But yes, that took place here for decades. And now there are programs on computers here for students? So there's the main kids code program, yes. And so that's been paused obviously because of the pandemic, but we look forward to resuming it. Yeah, and it's all about coding, right? Yes, yep. Which, don't ask me about that. Anyway, you have made some changes here. It is now Mechanics Hall is a sort of a more up to date name for the organization. There are only 19 or 20 membership libraries left in the country. At one time those were the only libraries, membership organizations. Tell us a little bit about if you become a member of Mechanics Hall and the library. What does that offer you in these other organizations around the country? Yeah, so that's a great question. So membership at the hall obviously supports the functions of the hall, our programs, me being here in the library, all the work that we do. But yeah, there's perks for membership obviously. So members can borrow from our library. Right now with the pandemic we're closed and only open to members. So members can come in here and work, hang out, borrow books. And you can, as a member you can rent spaces within the hall. There's a classroom and a board room, the library and our historic ballroom upstairs. Yeah, and there's some other perks as well. But one of the really cool perks is that you can go to the other membership libraries across the country where you have reciprocal borrowing. That's really cool. And you've changed your card catalog. Which is huge because up until this very year I guess there's been a little old fashion card catalog in little oak drawers. Yes, I think we may have been one of the last libraries in the country to still be using a card catalog system. And so the card catalog hasn't gone away. We get a lot of questions about that in the back of the library right over there by my desk. But we are working on importing all of our collection into an online database. So our patrons will have all of that online access that folks are used to now to be able to look and see if we have a book. If it's available, if it's checked out to request it. So and it helps us on this end to be able to attract things. And yeah, it's just great. Yeah, and during the pandemic and hopefully we won't have another lockdown. But people were able to order a book and pick it up at the door. Yes, we did curbside service and we're still offering that. So for folks who are compromised or maybe just not comfortable yet, we continue to offer the curbside service and folks can also come in and borrow to the in person. And being on the internet now, on the web and all, people can also come and sit in this beautiful space with their laptop and work. Yep, absolutely. The members who maybe want to get out of the house or don't have an office to go to. Or many authors, I think, probably come in and do some research and write. Yeah, there's a lot of folks right now who are still working from home, but looking to get out of the home a little bit. And so this is a nice controlled environment. There's not a lot of traffic going in and out. We have the windows open. We have the fans going. We're requiring masks in compliance with whatever the most recent CDC recommendation is, which is, of course, a moving target. So call if you have any questions about that. But yeah, yeah, it's a great place to sit and work and have like a little human interaction, but still be able to get some work done and just feel kind of relaxed like you're in your own home. Yes, yes, it's like an extended living room. And now you have just started having library cards, physical cards. Yes, yes. So this is a new development for us because we're able to have all of our books in the online catalog. People also have library cards, which allows them to request our items so that they can be waiting here for them for curbside pickup. You can order whatever items you want and we can put that together. And all of that is enabled by the library cards. And we're also hoping to, in the very near future, to offer access to e-audiobooks and e-books. And that will also be through the library card. So it'll open up a lot of things for us. And you're doing a summer book reading. Yes, yes. That's kind of fun. Tell us, tell our audience about that. So we're doing our first ever, I hope for many years to come, summer reading program for adults. And so the two ways to enter that right now are to sign up for a library card, which gets you your first ticket. And then you can get an additional ticket for each book that you finish in July and August. There's a basket right over there where you put the tickets. And then we have a giant tote bag full of goodies. Things are still being added to that, like all the time. But yeah, it's over there. It's amazing. There's so much good stuff. There's coffee, books, wine, snacks, gift certificates. It's super cool. I have my library card and I've added a few books in there. Excellent. And you don't, I mean, you don't actually have to have read a book that you've checked out from the library. Can I get the any book? Yeah, so, yeah. So the initial, the initial ticket is when you sign up for the library card. And then after that, it doesn't have to be our books, like bonus gold star stickers to that. But yeah, it doesn't have to be one of our books to. And another thing you're doing is a book reading group. Yes. So we actually have a couple of different book groups. We have a book group that meets at noon on the first Tuesday of the month. That group selects the books for us to talk about in September. We're actually going to be choosing the next several months worth of books. But this upcoming month, we'll be talking about James McBride, the color of water. And then in October, we'll be discussing Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet. So lots of great book choices. And then we also in partnership with the Portland Public Library and the Congress Square Park. You know, for some reason, I always want to call it Cumberland for a minute. I have to like, yeah, Congress Square Park. We meet every other week for Blurb Club. And that's a more informal book discussion when we all talk about whatever books we're reading. So you don't have to read a particular book, but it's a lot of fun. And we have really similar tastes. So we end up all reading books based on people's recommendations. So sometimes it turns into a little bit of a blur. I like the blur thing because you do. You know, if you have a book you've read, you want to tell everybody about it. But I think it's a great way to learn about what your friends have read. Yes, I have read books based on the recommendations in that book. Yeah. Well, I think the changes here are lovely. It's a comfortable place to come. Oh, I wanted to ask you about ordering books. How often do you order books? Do you take recommendations? Do you get them from the New York Times, you know, list or how does that happen? Yeah, that's a great question. So I place an order every month and that order is a combination of books that I think our readers will read and books that people have requested that I purchase. So as a member led library, our collection is shaped in many ways by the interests of our readers, both what I anticipate they might like reading and what they say, I'd love to have this book and then it begins added to the collection. Yes, that's how that happens. And then we also get a lot of donations from community members, too. And those also go into the collection. And you have various collections here. You have main main interest books, books about Maine. You have Maine authors, you have the crafts. That's lovely, too, to be able to come in and go right to an area you really want to focus on. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I was just talking about this the other day with another librarian. We were talking about the Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress classification. And who is that serving? You know, who is who is benefiting from that system? And in some ways, it's just the librarians because we know where to put stuff, we know where to find stuff, but for the average user coming in, it might not necessarily make a lot of sense where things are. And so what we've done here, which is a direction that a lot of smaller libraries are moving toward and some larger libraries, too, is creating neighborhoods. So it's sort of like more of a bookstore experience where you can go to the section on fiber art so you can go to American history or, you know, novels by Maine authors or whatever that is. And you can find them all together. I think that's lovely. And I use that. I come in and go, what's new today? Yeah. Well, thank you, Jules. This was wonderful. And I just checked out a book today as I returned another one. I'm getting better about returning in one time. Well, we don't charge fine. We just ask that you return them eventually. I'm so happy. Well, thank you. And thank you for being a member of Portland Media Center. Thank you so much, Leslie.