A few weeks after the new year begins, I will box up the last of my personal items from my office on the Morrill Memorial Library's second floor. The elegant 123-year old mahogany-lined walls, nearly floor-to-ceiling bookcases, leaded glass, and six-foot windows in the Director's office have been home to me for the past twelve years. When I lived closer to the library (in Norfolk until 2012 and Norwood until 2018), I would often drop in to the library to spend a weekend afternoon. I spent many more darkened hours on weeknights surrounded by urgent library work. Yet, any time of the day ..read more

 Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the September 17, 2020 edition of the Transcript & Bulletin. After the library closed in mid-March due to the Coronavirus, and when we were still in some disbelief of what was happening to life as we knew it, I immediately reached for my copy of Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Published in 2001, it became one of my all-time favorite books. As I thumbed through the pages and thought about it and other books about plagues and disease and death, I out ..read more

 Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the May 28, 2020 edition of the Transcript & Bulletin. The Coronavirus not only took us by surprise in winter, but we seem to have lost the spring. It canceled weeks of our scheduled lives: vacations, business trips, conferences, weddings, and birthdays have vanished in the confusing fog that has become enduring COVID-19. We are fated to remember these past two or three months, and more that will follow. How we first processed the news, what we lost and ..read more

Our library closed in mid-March due to COVID, but our librarians are still writing weekly columns for the Transcript. We directed our focus on writing about library services beyond the walls of the library building. In this unfamiliar, unprecedented time, we are reinventing our professional lives by working from home. We are committed to teaching our non-library users to sign up for a library card online. We've shared our news about the Chat with Us box on our website that is staffed 9-5 on weekdays. (After-hours chats are addressed directly to our adult services librarian's email where they ..read more

Librarian April Cushing is head of Adult and Information Services at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column published in the March 19, 2020 issue of the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin. I think I’m officially losing it. In this case, “it” refers to pretty much anything of importance I lay hands on. My mother called it carelessness. It’s not a recent affliction with me, but it may be getting worse. It’s definitely getting more frustrating. After my most recent episode, I realize I need to take action. I come from a long line of losers. My forebears (by marriage) lost waterfront ..read more

Nancy Ling is the Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts.  Read Nancy’s column in the March 12, 2020 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin. When someone you love is suddenly gone from your life, there are obvious things that you will miss—their captivating smile, their warm embrace, that goofy joke they told at every family gathering. Not surprisingly there are other heartaches that we cannot anticipate or measure—things we never imagined that we would long for after a loved one passes away. This was the case with my father. This April it will h ..read more

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte's column in the April 2,  2020 edition of the Transcript & Bulletin. Although we may be reminded lately of the dystopian novel, The Stand by Stephen King, the world has been here before. The 1918 H1N1 flu pandemic (also called the Spanish flu) was the deadliest epidemic of the 20th Century. It spread worldwide during 1918-1919 and was ameliorated by World War I and the crowded conditions in the trenches on the battlefields of the Western Front. “The virus traveled ..read more

Kirstie David is a Literacy and Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the March 26, 2020 edition of the Transcript &  Bulletin. I recently read a remarkable book. Actually, it was an audiobook narrated by the author, and once I began, I found it hard to stop. While not all narrators are created equally I can confirm that this one is delightful; the soothing cadence of her voice is like a lullaby for the soul. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” should be required reading. I mention this to everyone I’ve told about the ..read more

Kate Tigue is the Head of Youth Services at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the April 9, 2020 edition of the Transcript and Bulletin.  When this article is published, I will have completed nearly 4  weeks of staying at home during the COVID-19 global pandemic, all while working and parenting full-time. This time hasn’t been easy for anyone. These rapid changes in the way we live, while necessary, have left so many of us anxious, lonely, and pretty claustrophobic. I think I truly understand the sentiment of that old commercial where the overwhelmed woman cries ..read more

Kirstie David is a Literacy and Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the April 23, 2020 edition of the Transcript &Bulletin. The wisdom limned in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes – “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven” – is common enough to be known outside of religious circles. Through the thousands of years that mankind has been engaged in agriculture, we understand that there is a time when we plant seeds, a time to harvest, and even a time when the ground is resting, fallow. Nobody I k ..read more