Thank You and Welcome
Thank you for joining me on this bookish adventure!
A lot has happened since my first post, back on May 26 of 2022, so I thought it was time to do a post reintroducing myself to those of you who’ve been with me, and introduce myself to you who’ve recently joined us.
Guiding Principles
For this blog, and my Library Girl social media activity, I have two simple guiding principles:
- Be Hopeful
- Be On-Topic
In my original Welcome post (which was also my very first post here), that first principle was “Be Positive.”
In the months that have passed since then, I’ve learned a difference between being Positive and Hopeful.
There are times when positivity may feel forced or incorrect for the situation.
However, I believe that Hope is always warranted. I’m your Hope Girl as much as I’m your Library Girl.
I’ve bent that second principle, which I expected I’d do (I even warned y’all back in that first post that I may).
As I said in “The Mina Letters” post (November 7, 2022):
“When I started Library Girl, I thought that this blog would be dedicated to libraries, books, and related things; with no revealing of the girl behind the curtain. I even made “Be On-Topic” one of my two guiding principles in my very first post. So, I appreciate you taking this journey down the rabbit hole with me, and I hope it’s given you some insight into who I am.”
https://library-girl.com/2022/11/07/the-mina-letters/
A Bit About Me
I’m a shy introvert; however, over the time that I’ve been your Library Girl, I’ve become increasingly comfortable with sharing more and more of me.
In the beginning, I wasn’t even sharing my name (Mina); but with your trust and acceptance, I’ve been able to share some personal posts and inject more of my personality into the bookish posts.
Thank you.
That said, the majority of my posts do (and will continue to) focus on libraries, books, and related topics.
To me, tea is a topic that pairs well with books, so it will remain a recurring thread in our discussions.
The motto for Library Girl is “Libraries, hope, and the girl who believes in them.”
These words guide my writing.
I’ve discovered that hope is a recurring theme in my interactions with y’all on social media, and in my posts here; so, I’ve chosen to embrace hope as a core part of who I am and what I do as your Library Girl.
I’m a naturally hopeful person, and I’m as delighted to share this part of me with you as I am to babble about libraries.
And You?
I’m happy to learn about you; and I consider my writing to be a conversation, not a presentation.
You’re welcome to reach out to me by leaving a comment on a post or via social media.
You may follow the links on my Contact page, to engage with me online.
https://library-girl.com/contact/
A Pivot
Now that I’ve introduced my guiding principles and myself, and invited you to respond, I’m going to use the rest of this Welcome post to give a couple of tips for browsing the site and finding things on it, then give you a story from my bookish childhood before we wrap up.
Topics (Tags)
To help you discover things you may be interested in, I put a tag on every post.
You should see the tag at the bottom of a post.
So, when you’re done reading one post, you may click on the tag, to see summaries of related posts.
These are the tags I’m using, and clicking on one of them will take you to summaries of all the posts under that tag.
Favorite Things Leveling Up Libraries Libraries with Mina Library Cards Library Tour Personal Podcasts Read Along Reading Reading Roundup Summer Reading Welcome Writing
Finding Things
While it can be fun to use tags to browse related posts, at times we just want to find something particular.
There’s a “FIND” item in the menu bar of this site.
If you click on it, you should see a box that lets you search the site for a particular library, book, author, or other word.
Once Upon a Time
When I was five, Father was reading to me from his favorite book, as a bed time story.
The book was Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”
(Father’s bedtime stories also included the tales and poems of Edgar Allan Poe, so he showed a certain consistency.)
On one of the nights that we spent with “Dracula,” he paused while reading an entry from Mina Murray’s journal, and explained that my name, Mina, came from her; the clever heroine of the novel “Dracula.”
(For those unfamiliar with the structure of the book, it’s composed of journals, letters, newspaper articles, etc. So, when I mentioned Mina’s journal, I meant one of her journal entries in the novel “Dracula.”)
Wrapping Up
Now that I’ve explained my relationship to, and fondness for, “Dracula,” I’d like to end our time together with a quote from The Count himself.
“Come freely, go safely and leave something of the happiness you bring.”
– Bram Stoker
Until we meet again.
Love,
Your Library Girl, Mina
Thank you for reading.
Visit the Blog: https://library-girl.com
Connect with Me: https://library-girl.com/contact/