Haysville Library Commemorates Titanic Sinking

On April 10, 1912, the White Star Line’s huge new passenger vessel Titanic – the largest ship afloat at the time — set sail on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England. After brief visits at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, she departed for New York with 2,224 passengers and crew aboard. She carried lifeboats for just 1,178.

In the late evening hours of April 14th, at a point some 375 miles southeast of Newfoundland, she struck an iceberg, buckling a number of plates on her starboard side and breaching five of the ship’s sixteen watertight compartments. Within two and a half hours, early on the 15th of April, the Titanic sank with over a thousand on board. A few hours later, the 710 survivors were rescued from their lifeboats by the Carpathia, responding to the SOS transmitted by the new wireless telegraph aboard the stricken ship.

On Saturday, April 14th – the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic’s striking of the errant iceberg – the Haysville Community Library will host a special commemorative event, complete with dinner theater mystery, to celebrate the centennial.

As many Haysville residents know, the Haysville Community Library is the repository for the W. ‘Kress’ Fall Titanic Collection of memorabilia. This rich and varied collection encompasses books, papers, reproductions, models, newspapers, paintings, photographs and a host of other materials relating to the Titanic and its tragic sinking. To introduce this collection to the greater public, and acknowledge the centennial, the library plans a display of many of the items in the Kress Fall Collection along with the dinner event.

Tickets for the ‘A Night to Remember’ event, which will also raise funds for the library, are available now at the library circulation desk.

Arrival time is 5:30 pm on Saturday April 14th. The “ship” sails at 6 pm.

Tickets for First Class passengers are $25 each, or two for $45. Tickets for Steerage are $15 each, or two for $25.

First Class passengers will be served a six course meal. Steerage passengers will dine on Irish stew, biscuits and fruit. On both levels, a mystery to be solved will be presented. Steerage will also enjoy Irish music.

Passengers are encouraged to attend in period dress, but any proper dinner clothing will be acceptable.

For any details concerning ‘A Night to Remember’, the Kress Fall Titanic Collection, or other concerns, please contact the Haysville Community Library at 524-5242.

Summer 2011 Consumer Information Catalog Now Available

The Summer 2011 edition of the Federal Citizen Information Center’s Consumer Information Catalog has arrived. Copies are available free, on a first-come-first-serve basis, on the octagon near the circulation desk at the library entrance.

The Consumer Information Catalog lists dozens of free and low-cost brochures, pamphlets, books and documents from a number of government agencies and departments on a wide range of topics – cars, computers, employment, family, federal programs, food, health, housing, and much more — all available from the Federal Citizen Information Center.

For more information, visit the Federal Citizen Information Center.

City Wide Garage Sale Permits On Sale Now

2011 Quilt Raffle Tickets Now On Sale

The 2011 Quilt is now on display.

One of the many uniquely wonderful aspects of the Haysville Community Library is the library quilters, who meet each Monday and Wednesday in the library community room and, over the course of the year, create a stunning number of beautiful and practical works of art.

Each year the library quilters donate one special quilt to the Haysville Community Library Foundation, to be raffled as a fundraiser for that nonprofit organization which so frequently aids the library.

This year’s quilt is now on display at the circulation desk, and tickets are on sale ($1 each, or 6 for $5) for the drawing to be held at our annual Christmas holiday celebration on December 23rd.

Quilters at work in the young adult section on a recent Wednesday.

Twelfth Anniversary of May 3 Tornado

The Wichita Eagle’s website has produced an excellent short video of Sedgwick County Commissioner and former Haysville Mayor Tim Norton recalling his experience twelve years ago today, when the devastating tornado of May 3, 1999 struck Haysville.

For a series of photographs reviewing some of the damage from that tornado, see our tenth anniversary posts here, here, and here, featuring photos donated by Jody Miller.

New Consumer Information Catalog Arrives

The Spring 2011 edition of the Federal Citizen Information Center’s Consumer Information Catalog has arrived. Copies are available free, on a first-come-first-serve basis, in the foyer on the table displaying a variety of brochures of interest to consumers.

The Consumer Information Catalog lists dozens of free and low-cost brochures, pamphlets, books and documents from a number of government agencies and departments on a wide range of topics – cars, computers, employment, family, federal programs, food, health, housing, and much more — all available from the Federal Citizen Information Center.

For more information, visit the Federal Citizen Information Center website.

Campus Graduates Will Receive Constitution at Their Own Declaration of Independence

Library Director Betty Cattrell and Kathryn Compton of the Flores del Sol Chapter of the DAR present 300 copies of the Constitution to Campus High Principal Myron Regier.

Each and every member of this year’s graduating class at Campus High School will receive a free copy of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Nearly three hundred copies of the Constitution in booklet form were donated to the graduating class by the Haysville Community Library and the Flores del Sol chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. These booklets are identical to those distributed to the public by the library during its annual Constitution and Citizenship Day celebration, held each September.

Anyone interested in obtaining copies of the Constitution booklet for their group is encouraged to contact Betty Cattrell at the Haysville Community Library, 524-5242.

Happy 150th, Kansas!

2011 Kansas Reads!

This year’s choice for the statewide reading and discussion project Kansas Reads! Is Thomas Fox Averill’s What Kansas Means To Me, a broad selection of twentieth century writers’ portraits of the Sunflower State and comments on what it means to be a Kansan.

The Haysville Community Library will sponsor a special book discussion of What Kansas Means To Me in the spring, and feature readings from the book during our 30th Annual Read-a-thon in April.

If you’d like to learn more about the Kansas Reads! program, and about this year’s book, visit the Kansas Center for the Book 2011 Kansas Reads! page, or join us at 6:30 pm this coming Saturday January 29th for our special celebration of Kansas’ 150th birthday.

New Consumer Information Catalog Arrives

The new Winter 2010-2011 edition of the Federal Citizen Information Center’s Consumer Information Catalog has arrived. Copies are available free, on a first-come-first-serve basis, in the foyer on the table displaying a variety of brochures of interest to consumers.

The Consumer Information Catalog lists dozens of free and low-cost brochures, pamphlets, books and documents from a number of government agencies and departments on an extraordinary range of subjects – cars, computers, employment, family, federal programs, food, health, housing, and more — all available from the Federal Citizen Information Center.

For further information, visit the Federal Citizen Information Center website.

Prison Libraries

“The problem with the public discussion about libraries in prison is that it’s the wrong discussion. For over a century now, the debate has centered on reading — on which books should, or more often should not, be included on the prison library’s shelves; which books are “harmful” or “helpful”; whether reading is a privilege or a right. In 1867, Wines argued that a book like “Robinson Crusoe” — at the time, the only secular novel permitted in prison — served the cause of criminal rehabilitation. Others fervently disagreed.

“But the issue of reading is only one dimension of the question, and not necessarily the salient one. The crucial point of a prison library may not be its book catalog: The point is that it is a library.

“The library is a shared public space, a hub, where people spend significant portions of their time, often daily. It is a place inmates work and, in some important ways, live. It is more purposeful and educational than a recreational yard, less formal than a classroom. The prison library gives inmates an organic way to connect to the world, to each other, to themselves as citizens. It’s a small democratic institution set deep within a prison, one they can choose to join.

“This is no small matter. The vast majority of prison inmates will eventually be released back into the free world, back into the community. What happens to them once they are out is the critical piece of the corrections puzzle. It doesn’t take an expert to know that a person who lands in prison, a person often already on the margins of society, will grow further isolated from the norms and routines of society while in prison. And yet, at the very same time, and in this very same building, many inmates — often for the first time in their lives — are also quietly becoming enmeshed in an important social institution.”

Writing for the Boston Globe, Avi Stenberg, author of Running the Books:The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian, explores the social role of prison libraries in Escape Route

2010 Census

While detailed population counts down to the block level will not be available until February, the US Census Bureau yesterday released the national and state level counts from the 2010 census, along with the new apportionment of the US House of Representatives.

As indicated in the graphic display above, the total resident US population count as of April 1, 2010 was 308,745,538. Nearly 40 percent of the growth during the past decade can be attributed to immigration.

The rate of population increase during the past ten years was 9.7%, marking the first decade of the 21st century as the slowest growing since the 1940 census.

As for Kansas, the resident population increased from 2,688,418 in 2000 to 2,853,118 – an increase of 164,700 or 6.1%, leaving Kansas 33rd in population among the states.

While Kansas retains its current allotment of congressional seats with 4, and therefore retains 6 electoral votes for the 2012 election, ten states will see their congressional delegations reduced by 1 (Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) or 2 (New York and Ohio).

Eight states will gain congressional seats, including Texas (+4) and Florida (+2), along with Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington (+1 each).

For much greater detail, see the various reports and graphics available at the US Census Bureau website.