Here's my smile for the week.

One day a small, attractive, older woman came into the library. She told me with a heavy accent that she just LOVES the library, since thanks to us she learned to speak English! She would get books on tape and listen to them over and over again until she understood the words. Then she would come back for more.

"That's great!" I said. "How long ago was that?"

"Oh, almost twenty years ago, when I came to America from Poland when I was 62."
I about fell over--that meant she was almost 82! I had thought she was in her late sixties at the most.

A little while later she came to the circ desk with an armload of magazines. "I like to keep up on beauty tips," she said.

I decided on the spot, instead of plastic surgery I'll move to a foreign country as a senior citizen.
Her young-at-heart, infectious joy toward life kept me smiling the rest of the day.

What does C.A.F.E. stands for?

Collaborative. Affiliates. Fostering. Engagement.

Café is a committee of Pages, Library Assistants, Librarians, and members from our Technical Service, Human Resource, Public Relations and Volunteer Coordinator departments that meet every six weeks for two hours to discuss creative ways to educate the public about the value of Kitsap Regional Library. We also want to be united in our purpose as a library system in this community by discussing ways to equip and motivate staff to “celebrate” KRL not only at work but also in their everyday interactions with others.

Café includes members from all nine branches of the county as well as members from our Bookmobile and Outreach departments. We have been an active committee going on two years and are proud of the many accomplishments we have achieved in that time. Some of those accomplishments include facts that we like to call “Did you know?”

DYN facts help the community to understand what the library does for them. It points you to resources that you might not have had knowledge of before. DYN facts include statistics about KRL, classes and online tools, programs that KRL offers, book groups, and fun facts that tie into our monthly themes and other important events happening in our world.

If you have been to any KRL branch over the last year you will also notice that the library has taken another step toward being eco friendly by getting rid of our plastic bags. This was a development that happened because of the bright minds of our Café committee. In place of the plastic bags we now offer reusable canvas bags that you can obtain for $2.00. Look around your community and it’s easy to spot the people helping keep our world clean by using the beautiful dark green bags labeled “The Ultimate Green.”

Café is also responsible for a new group that has joined the KRL family this past year, The Ambassadors! The Ambassadors are responsible for reaching out to the public at local events like The Kitsap County Fair, The Future Festival in Port Gamble, The Cruz in Port Orchard, Chief Seattle Days in Suquamish and The Blackberry Festival in Downtown Bremerton. At these events Ambassadors are responsible for getting the word out about KRL. That can be anything from encouraging others to sign up for a library card, letting people know about upcoming events and public meetings to just listening to our community and gathering information about what the public wants the library to provide.

These are just a few of the great ideas to have come from our Café committee. I hope that this blog is helpful and that everyone can understand how a group like this has been beneficial to our library system and our community. If you have any comments or questions please let us know.

Thank You,
Kitsap Regional Library Café Committee