Night Owl, September 2, 2022

Copper Queen Library
Bisbee, Arizona
For those new to the Night Owl and our "Libraries Around the World" opening segment, each week we feature a different library, rural or urban, ancient or modern, notable for its architecture, its collection, or its community spirit. This week it is the Copper Queen Library in Bisbee, Arizona.

The Copper Queen Library is the oldest in Arizona. In fact, it is older than the state itself, having been founded in 1882 and open continuously ever since. Once focused on mining and the development of the Copper Queen Mine, Bisbee today is a study in contrasts. A small, rural town of 5,575 near the Mexican border, it's a low-income community—more than a quarter of the residents are below poverty level and more than 80 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch—yet it’s also full of educated, professional retirees, many of whom moved to Bisbee from elsewhere. The Library has taken strategic advantage of this mix to deliver innovative library service where it’s most needed. An example is the Copper Queen Library Annex.

The Annex was established to bring books to Bisbee's San Jose neighborhood , a low-income area furthest from the main Copper Queen building with limited transportation options for its residents. Located in a large classroom space in a formerly abandoned school, the Annex (pictured below) offers materials for all ages, as well as access to computers and the Internet, and programs tailored to the surrounding community.

The Annex has no paid staff except the coordinator, who is often off-site conducting outreach. Some 30 dedicated trained volunteers, many of them local retirees, keep the place running 28 hours a week, processing materials, facilitating early literacy and tutoring programs, educating patrons in computer use and other technologies, and advocating on behalf of the Library for literacy for all ages.

To find out more about this illuminating book and to register for this program, please visit here. It is not necessary to have read the book, to participate in the hike.

Norfolk Library Book Group with Mark Scarbrough
Ivan Turgenev, Home of the Gentry (1859)
Thursday, September 29, 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. or 7:30 - 9:00 p.m.
This fall Mark's popular Book Group remains virtual, as the group tackles the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev. As Mark writes: "Turgenev is admittedly a bit esoteric these days. Which is fine by someone like me obsessed by Dante—and I hope fine by you, too."
The Turgenev schedule:

29 September HOME OF THE GENTRY (1859)
20 October FATHERS AND SONS (1862)
17 November SPRING TORRENTS (1872)
15 December VIRGIN SOIL (1877)

If you are new to the Book Group and would like to participate, please email Mark at [email protected], and he will email you a formal invitation link to the online discussion group. Interested in Mark's obsession with Dante? Check out his podcast Walking with Dante, a slow walk across the known universe in Dante's Comedy.

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