We
are honored to announce a new display at Kurth Memorial
Library. Mr. Robert Ruby of Lufkin has generously
agreed to allow us to display his model of the Sailing
Ship Elissa. This model, beautifully displayed inside a
glass and wood case, is located near our Circulation
Desk.
Elissa is a three-masted, iron-hulled
sailing ship built in 1877 in Aberdeen, Scotland by
Alexander Hall & Company. She carries nineteen sails
covering over one-quarter of an acre in surface area.
Tall ships are classified by the configuration of their
sailing rig. In Elissa’s case, she is a 'barque' because
she carries square and fore-and-aft sails on her fore
and mainmasts, but only fore-and-aft sails on her
mizzenmast.
From her stern to the tip of her jibboom she measures
205 feet. Her height is 99 feet, 9 inches at the main
mast and she displaces about 620 tons at her current
ballast.
This floating
National Historic Landmark has been designated one of
America's Treasures by the National Trust for Historic
Preservation.
Anyone interested in
learning more about the Elissa can see the Texas A&M
Press book Sailing
Ship Elissa by Patricia Bellis Bixel (if our
copy is not available, patrons may stop by the Reference
Desk to be put on the waiting list), or visit the
Galveston Historical Foundation’s website (http://www.galvestonhistory.org/1877_Tall_Ship_ELISSA.asp).
We encourage
everyone to come in and see this beautiful scratch-built
model while it is on loan to the library.
Read more about the model.
The
new year will bring a Dallas-based librarian to head
Lufkin’s Kurth Memorial Library. Deputy City Manager and
Interim Library Director Keith Wright made the announcement
Friday following a national search. “Lorraine Simoneau
emerged as the person the City and the Board of Directors
felt could move the Library forward into this new decade.
Ms. Simoneau will continue to develop the collection,
initiate programming and fine-tune operations at our
Library.” Wright adds that Simoneau has been the assistant
director of a branch library in the Dallas Public Library
System and was ready to step up to a director’s job.
Recently
we’ve had patrons tell us that they’d like us to post a
complete listing of our new items. Obviously, we can’t list
everything in a newspaper article, so we’ve come up with a
way to provide this information to our patrons. We now have
a listing, sorted by area, available on our website and in
print form at the Reference Desk. We'll be updating this
information once every week or two, so if you want to know
what’s new by your favorite author, try taking a look at
this list. Please let us know how you like this new
service and if we need to consider making any changes to it.
