Community Corner

Fanwood Library Prepares for Visit from U.S. Secretary of Education

Arne Duncan will be at the library Monday afternoon.

Preparing for a big guest is no easy feat when you're a library the size of Fanwood.

Yesterday afternoon, shortly after announcing that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan would be stopping by the library Monday afternoon at 2 p.m., librarian Dan Weiss and other staff members were already busy preparing for the visit.

Books were straightened, tables were cleaned, and staff huddled in the back of the room trying to answer the big question: Where should the secretary sit?

"Somebody said this was the stimulus package. He comes, and he stimulates you to clean up," Weiss said with a laugh.

Weiss first got a call from the secretary’s office last Thursday informing him that they were interested in coming, but he didn’t get confirmation that it would in fact happen until Tuesday.

“I think they’ll be surprised when they come here and see how small we are,” he said. “I don’t really get why they picked Fanwood.”

Right now, a lot of what will happen is still up in the air.

Weiss said he's not yet sure what book the secretary will read, or whom he’ll bring with him.

It’s been rumored that the president of the American Library Association may show up, but no one knows for sure yet.

Area mayors and librarians have also been invited. The Fanwood Library’s children librarian is also currently working to invite a group of local kids, ages kindergarten through third grade, to be there since Duncan has requested that he be able to read to children while there.

The library will likely remove most of the tables in the center of the library, along with the brown cushioned chairs in the back, to make room for all of the visitors.

“When you’ve got 20 kids, that’s already 30 adults in here, with their parents,” Weiss said. “We’re just going to host the thing best we can.”

This is the second visit to New Jersey for Duncan in recent weeks. On June 5, Duncan took his “Listening and Learning” tour to Newark charter school North Star Academy-Clinton Hill, where he announced that more than $891 million is now available for New Jersey under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

His trip to Fanwood is meant to promote the "Summer of Service," a national volunteer initiative that will run from June 22 to September 11. The visit also coincides with the beginning of the library's Summer Reading Activities registration drive. The theme for this year's reading activities is "Get Creative at the Library," and will include a wealth of storytimes and workshops around town.

The library now has less than three days to get ready for the event. Weiss was feeling a little nervous about it all yesterday, but overall, he said, “it’s cool.”

“It’s very exciting,” Weiss said. “We are what we are, so we can’t make the library bigger or shinier, but it’s wonderful.”


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