Life's like that!

October 19, 2008

Library Makeover Part 4

Yesterday morning husband helped to set up 4 bookshelves that we bought for the mosque library on Friday night. All praise be to Allah SWT I'm so glad that he is enthusiastic about the library. He even helped me to put up a library bulletin board by the mosque entrance. Daughter looked puzzled and seemed to be wondering why we were so busy at the mosque. I'm glad that half of the time she was busy playing with kids of her own age.

Most of the weekend school students dropped by to take a look and they were all excited that they have a library. I have to keep telling them that the library will only be ready today but they just couldn't contain their excitement and went off to tell all their friends about it. One student even said that the library will be the "best class" in the mosque. I think they may be surprised to find a cool librarian running the library ;-) Another group of students swing by and asked if I want to buy 4 used books for $2. I told them that I didn't have the money but it'll be great if they could donate the books to the library. Too bad they were not interested in my suggestion but I have a feeling that they will come back to the library to read soon.

As there are still many computers and tall shelves in the library, I kept worrying that they will not be moved in time for today's Family Day at the mosque. I told the Imam that I would like to have a library open house on this day so that the community is aware of this and he agreed. He also said that it might be possible to relocate the library to a bigger room in the mosque to provide more space for books and to cater to more readers, but they are trying to fix a leaking roof in the room now so that will wait till later.

A good friend, Sr. Nahil and her son came at about 1:30pm to help me translate bibliographic information for Arabic books to English so that I can catalogue them. We had a great time talking about the different forms of Arabic spoken in different regions, and she shared her experience as a preschool Arabic teacher with me. Another sister from the community also helped in this task after the weekend school ended.

Today I'm going to put up a notice to ask for book donation from the community. Allah SWT willing I hope we'll get good response.