Lake Forest Library sees increase in new media lab use, welcomes new librarians

Lake Forest resident Susan Mortensen is examining a slide of an old family photo on a Wednesday afternoon in the Lake Forest Library. Next to her sits a box full of hundreds of slides that her late father left her, some with photos from as early as the 1920s. Surprisingly, these are the slides she’s already picked out; there were thousands to choose from. Mortensen decided only to scan the photos that had family members in them.

Mortensen is using the new media lab at the Lake Forest Library to complete her ambitious project of scanning each slide, editing each digitized photo, and putting the pictures into a slideshow, complete with captions and music, to send to her family members.

“It’s just unbelievable what you can do [here],” Mortensen said while editing out the grainy spots on a picture. “It’s a very slow process, but ... it’s really fun. It’s a walk down memory lane for me.”

The Lake Forest Library’s media lab, which opened in July last year, has seen a recent uptick in projects like Mortensen’s, said Felicia Song, the head reference librarian at the Lake Forest Library. The media lab, which is tucked in a corner of the library, contains a collaborative space with several large tables surrounded by walls of whiteboards, so that one can brainstorm or doodle on a larger scale, as well as another room separated by a glass door.

This room contains the professional hardware and software that gives the media lab its name: a Mac Pro with two 27-inch monitors loaded with the Adobe Creative Suite, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Blender, Sketchup and the like; an Intuos Pro Wacom tablet, a keyboard, microphone, studio headphones, an Epson V600 scanner, a printer, a VHS and DVD player, several portable hard drives, and much more, so that Lake Forest Library cardholders who are of high school age or older can book the media lab once a week for up to two hours and use the lab to record and edit songs or podcasts, print pictures, edit videos and photos, build websites and create art.

The media lab was originally conceived as a space for students to continue working on projects that they started in school, Song said.

“We see it as a continuation of education and services,” she said. “The library opens much longer than schools. Our thinking is that we can extend that [time] for [students] to continue their projects. If they start something [at school], they can finish it here on evenings.”

Library patrons can also use the media lab to digitize and restore old photographs, slides and VHS tapes, which is what it has mostly been used for since its launch.

“It’s very heavily used for converting old family movies, old photos, old papers, and digitizing those,” Song said. “We think that really fits what our population needs and [this] brings them to see what the technology can do for them in their daily life.”

Doug Smithenry, one of the media lab’s assistants who gives free half-hour tutorials to media lab patrons, said that he enjoys working with patrons on digitizing their projects.

“It’s interesting because one of the biggest things is that they haven’t been able to watch these films [on VHS] in a while, so they’re like time capsules,” Smithenry said. “I get to see people revisiting their memories.”

Emerging technologies librarian Chris Schoenherr wants to expand the media lab’s offerings with computer classes and other technology programs.

“The technology we have in this room is out of this world. I see a lot of potential with what people can do in here,” Schoenherr said. “Once people can see what you can do in here, we’re going to start to see a much wider range of projects that people are working on. Any way we can encourage people to get creative with the tools we provide for them is [exciting].”

For more information about the Lake Forest Library’s media lab, or to book the lab for a project, visit www.lakeforestlibrary.org/medialab.

New faces in the library

Of the two new librarians Lake Forest residents will see in the library — Kathy Wellington and Chris Schoenherr, one of them, Wellington, has actually worked at the library on and off since 1998. She was a longtime children’s services assistant until she went back to school, receiving her master’s in library sciences in 2009. She then worked at the Lake Forest Library and at other libraries part-time for years.

Wellington, a Lake Forest resident, started at the library in January as a full-time young adult and children’s librarian, and she loves it so far. Part of her job is to order and maintain the young adult and children’s collection and to run two book discussion clubs for kids in elementary and middle school.

“I’ve loved being able to read the books, order the books and talk about the books with the kids,” Wellington said. “I love the book clubs. It’s amazing to hear what [the kids] say and help them to read more into the books.”

Schoenherr also started in January and is the library’s emerging technologies librarian, what he describes is a “mix of an IT guy and a librarian.” He oversees the library’s media lab and parts of its non-fiction collection, and maintains the library’s social media presence and website, as well as keeping one-on-one technology appointments with patrons.

Schoenherr worked in the Algonquin and Prospect Heights libraries before moving into this position, and he’s excited to be here in Lake Forest. He said advancing the library’s technology programs and media lab is right up his alley.

“People come to libraries and think ‘books,’” Schoenherr said. “There’s certainly a part of a library that’s for that, but we want people to see that libraries in general are great collaborative workplaces. They’re places where people can actually meet. The whole point of why we created this room here was to have people feel more comfortable working at these tables, [to be] able to talk [and work].”