The Dutch have invaded northern Illinois and we are theirs. For those of you who have not already heard of Erik and Jaap on Michael Stephens' blog Tame the Web, they are two Dutch librarians from Delft Public Library in The Netherlands. They were in the area to do a video documentary about libraries that are using gaming to draw teen users. Jenny Levine at ALA recommended our humble (no really!) little library as one of the few they should visit while they were here. To call them simply charming is to damn with faint praise. I was amazed, no flabbergasted, that our library worldviews were in such perfect sync, ours being developed here in Kankakee and theirs in the far off Netherlands. I've struggled as of late for a firm conceptual framework for all this library 2.0 stuff. Erik stated it neatly. Libraries are story tellers. We keep the stories, share the stories and make the stories. Such a concept frees us from any one medium. Stories can be kept in books, on cd or dvd, in podcasts or vodcasts. It won't matter if any of those media are lost and replaced by something else, the stories will remain and thus our purpose. Thanks to Erik and Jaap for reminding me why I went into this nutty business. WOW I have a great job!

Steve Bertrand
Assistant Director