In her essay How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life, Barbara Kingsolver wrote, “A librarian named Miss Truman Richey snatched me from the jaws of ruin, and it’s too late now to thank her.  I’m not the first person to notice that we rarely get around to thanking those who’ve helped us most.  Salvation is such a heady thing the temptation is to dance gasping on the shore, shouting that we are alive, till our forgotten savior has long since gone under.  Or else sit quietly, sideswiped and embarrassed, mumbling that we did know pretty much how to swim.  But now that I see the wreck that could have been, without Miss Richey, I’m of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the soul they never knew they saved.”¹

It would be safe to say that there was something excellent about that library.  Ms. Kingsolver published this essay nearly thirty years later, ruminating about what some of the books she read that year meant to her, and thanking Doris Lessing and William Saroyan and Miss Truman Richey for saving “a surly soul like mine.”

It would also be safe to say that in the Pacific Northwest there are hundreds of libraries that have excellent collections, excellent service, excellent programs and/or excellent librarians and staff.

Our conference this year celebrates our excellence!  What a great theme for a joint conference – PNLA, British Columbia Library Association and B.C. Library Trustees Association – in Kelowna in the beautiful Okanagan in May.  There are excellent workshops on collections, acquisitions and electronic resources; on literacy programs and marketing; on coaching staff and mentoring; and on ethics for a new millennium.  These workshops will help all of us to affirm and grow our excellence.

The conference offers lots of opportunities for networking and socializing.  There is also time set aside for committee meetings and round tables (formerly known as interest groups).

By the time you receive this Quarterly, you should have returned your ballot for the election, bylaws amendments and dues revisions to the PNLA Secretary.  Two of the Notices of Motion were published in the last Quarterly; the others were on PNLA-L and are in this issue.  In accordance with the bylaws, the ballots were mailed to the membership 60 days prior to the date of the membership meeting at the conference.  Your support of the amendments and dues revisions will enable the Board to move the Association in the direction that the membership approved at the Sun Valley Conference.  Results will be announced at the membership meeting on May 27^th.

Among the other reports at the membership meeting, the Adult Books Award Committee will be announcing their plans and how you can participate in the process of selecting the winning books.  I know I can’t nominate Barbara Kingsolver, but I could suggest Ivan Doig.  Some time ago, a PNLA Board member recommended his books and I’ve just this winter found time – reading one led to another and another and now I feel like I know the McCaskills and their friends and neighbours in Two Medicine country.  (Committee: are you listening?)  A Montanan who lives in Seattle and writes as if Montana’s landscape and weather were also characters – what could be more Pacific Northwest?

It would also be safe to say that there’s a cost associated with excellence, but "whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation" – words of wisdom from Walter Cronkite.

1. Kingsolver, Barbara.  High Tide in Tucson.  HarperCollins, 1995. (p.46)

Karen Labuik may be reached at klabuik@marigold.ab.ca or (403) 934-5334.

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