It's National Library Week! And National Library Workers Day!

National Library Week is underway!  I blogged about this already (here's that post, in case you missed it), but I'm going to blog about it a lot more in the coming days.

I am a great believer in libraries--and in actual books, ones that have covers you can open, and spines with titles on them, and pages fashioned out of paper and ink.  Although I am not a great fan of John Dewey's progressive ideals, I do get nostalgic about my own school days long, long ago, when I used his Decimal System regularly.  We Stone Age types didn't employ an Internet search bar to find a book; we thumbed through index cards filed in the library's card catalog.

Dear reader, are you old enough to remember actually using these babies?

Card catalogs have pretty much gone the way of the dinosaurs.  I guess some  libraries still use them, but they are becoming an endangered species.  Although you can find them being repurposed in interesting ways on Pinterest and other online sites...

...and they look pretty cool.  Now that's home décor with oodles of character, if you want my opinion.

Card catalogs might become extinct before long, but I sure hope that doesn't happen to libraries.  Because as swell as reading books on Kindle might be, it would be a pretty sad world if all printed books disappeared forever.  In this woman's opinion, anyway.  (And hey, dear reader, are you old enough to remember actually using the word "swell"?)

This Tuesday of this wonderful week-long library extravaganza has been dubbed "National Library Workers Day," so you should show your favorite librarian some love...and what better way to do so than with a book?  Right?

And hey, funny coincidence: I just happen to be giving away a copy of my second YA Catholic novel, Erin's Ring, in honor of National Library Week...and Erin's Ring just happens to prominently feature a public library and a kindly and helpful librarian.   How perfect is THAT?  Wouldn't it make a great gift for that special library worker in your life?  (Or for you?  Or your daughter?)

Aside from a copy of Erin's Ring, I am also giving away a copy of my first novel, Finding Grace.   Both books are populated with plucky Irish-American characters, unabashedly celebrate the beauty of the Catholic Faith, and have chaste love stories thrown in for good measure.   If you are interested in entering to win a copy of one of these novels, just leave me a comment by midnight on April 18--and feel free to let me know which one you'd prefer.  (If you'd like to find out more about them, click on the images of their covers on the sidebar and those will take you to the Amazon pages, where you can read a synopsis and some reviews.)

Stay tuned for more on National Library Week.  But for now, leave me a comment if you're so moved.  I'd love to hear from you!