Never again will a book be lent from 35 Leroy Avenue. See the final day flickr photoset.

Former Darien Library board president Alice Look created this wonderful retrospective. Today at 6:00 PM, the doors will close on 35 Leroy Avenue forever. When we reopen on January 10th, 2009 in our new location, we will be one of the first New Libraries–a third place that engages and enriches the community. The short six minute video is named after the book by Ray Oldenburg that inspired many of our design decisions.

I’m really proud of the people I work with. If it were possible to capture in a single word the confluence of physical space, library science, technology, focus on service, hospitality, and user experience that our new building embodies, it would be something akin to “masterpiece”.

But we’ve got miles to go before …

If you’re planning on going to Code4Lib in Providence this year, you might want to consider a short train ride down to Darien for the Friday after.  The first official unconference in our new building will be a fun-filled day of Drupal for libraries goodness.  It’ll be like brownies, without the nuts.

Here is the official announcement:

Darien Library will be hosting a “Drupal4Lib Camp” on  Friday, February 27, 2009 from 9 am to 4 pm.

The camp will be an  opportunity for libraries who are working with Drupal, or interested in  implementing Drupal, to get together, share experiences, solve problems, and  collaborate. This unconference will be a combination of a series of 10 min  lightning talks given by Drupal veterans in the morning followed by break-out  sessions in the afternoon.

Audio and video from Drupal4Lib Camp  sessions will also be streamed lived online.

There is no registration  fee. However, participation is limited to 70.  Please register for the  Drupal4Lib Camp at http://drupalib.interoperating.info/node/167

So, I may have been a little ambitious when I thought I could get SOPAC2, Locum, and Insurge released within a week of launching the new darienlibrary.org.  But I can now finally say that SOPAC2 is officially released and a new project website launched.

You can visit the new site and download the software at TheSocialOPAC.net.

The purpose of the site is to help a build a community of developers and users around the SOPAC project suite.  It will undoubtably grow over time as the software does.  We have big plans for SOPAC and invite you all to join the community.

After a long summer, the new DarienLibrary.org went live this morning.  The new website is running Drupal 6 and SOPAC 2.0.

Josh Hadro has written a very nice article about the particulars of the new social catalog application suite, and Richard Wallis has posted a podcast of a conversation I had with him last week about it.

We’re lucky to have such a great staff here in Darien, all of whom have put a huge amount of effort to making the new site a success.  Thanks guys!

And now, it’s time for a nap!