Yesterday, I finished e-mailing all the Washington State libraries I could reach. Today, I start querying Minnesota. Why not Oregon? I am still waiting for a map from the Oregon tourism bureau. I will need 12 or 13 maps for the states I will be traveling through and some haven't arrived yet. I will be at this until Christmas.
This is the system I use. The map of each state is propped up beside the computer. First I work out the probable routes I could take through the state. I circle the cities along those routes and begin the process of finding them on the internet. In some cases, that is easy. Wisconsin, for example, has all the public libraries in one site in alphabetical order. In some states, I have to look up each city individually.
Sometimes, I have to go to the city government to find the library and through the staff listings to find the proper person. Sometimes, I have to go through a form site, and each of those is different. One regional library system in Washington would not allow me to put a link to my blog. That required some re-writing to get the information out there.
The system may seem arduous, but it is an improvement on printing up a costly brochure, hand writing each address, and paying for postage. Most of those brochures would be tossed in a waste basket, a waste of paper. I figure 90 percent of my postings are deleted, about the same rate as the loss of brochures. This seems a better option from an environmental standpoint.
So, I keep going. By the end of today, I will likely have close to 300 people looking at this blog. That gives me hope.
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