Saturday, May 26, 2007

Final frontier coming soon to Gail Borden

May 18, 2007

ELGIN -- Gail Borden Public Library's marketing director today will go where no local library marketing director has gone before.

Denise Raleigh will be greeted at the Cleveland airport at 10 a.m. by NASA employees. She'll be escorted to a U-Haul rental office, where a 24-foot-long truck will be waiting. She'll go to NASA's Glenn Research Center and load into this truck "rocketry of all kinds," Raleigh said.

"When you're going to NASA, might as well get all you can," she said.

Among the precious cargo will be a 35-foot-tall inflatable rocket and, most valuable of all, a rock taken from the surface of the moon.

Raleigh and her husband -- because they had passed NASA background and security checks -- will drive these goods nearly 400 miles back home. More NASA inventory is coming from California, and three semitrailers full of stuff will be unpacked by volunteers this weekend at the library.

The pieces will be on display June 2 to Sept. 23 as part of the "Space: Dare to Dream" exhibit.

This kind of program is indicative of what libraries today can and should provide to their communities, said Executive Director Carole Medal.

"A library is not just about books." Recreational and entertainment programs and exhibits foster learning and literacy in library patrons, she said.

"They want to learn more about (space), they turn around and here are books and materials for them to go to," Medal said.

"This is not just a place to house the traditional library materials. We feel like we're charged with utilizing the facility to the nth degree."

Lunar sample 60015.85 is not a traditional library item.

The 129-gram rock was cut from a larger sample picked up in the Descartes Highlands area of the moon during an Apollo 16 mission, said NASA exhibits specialist Dwayne Hunt.

"First of all, it's irreplaceable, until we can actually go back to the moon," Hunt said of the rock's worth. If forced to do the math, he said, one could assume lunar samples are worth more than $8 million an ounce.

Also worth quite a bit is a firsthand account from an astronaut. Medal is working on procuring a guest speaker. She can't divulge names but said she may get a working astronaut to visit Gail Borden.

"We have all of our fingers and toes crossed."

The library foundation will host a preview of the exhibit from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 1. Tickets are $30 for individuals, $50 for couples and $100 for families. Proceeds benefit the new branch being planned for the city's west side.

For more information, call the library's information desk at (847) 429-4680.

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