Happy Thanksgiving from EnvisionWare

The Man in the Turkey Shirt!

Dear friends,

On the eve of this holiday weekend, we at EnvisionWare would like to stop for a moment and reflect on all of the things for which we are thankful. On a professional level we are grateful for the warm reception you have given our new products this year; I'm thinking in particular of the Library Document Station (LDS) and the 24-Hour Library. To see customers' faces light up when we demonstrate or install these products really gives those of us "in the trenches" a big boost. It's a great feeling to know that we're making a contribution to the betterment of libraries.

On a personal level, we at EnvisionWare are thankful for some additions to our growing family. By my count, five babies have been born to EnvisionWare employees this year, all daughters (that includes The Baby in the Purple Shirt, born Sep. 16). Four of these employees are first-time parents and will no doubt be going into this holiday season with even greater feelings of joy, wonder, and hope than usual.

Finally, we are grateful for our ongoing relationships with you--our customers. We exist because of you, and we work for you.

Thank you all!

24 Hour Library: Making History

As most readers of this blog are probably aware, we have had a momentous couple of months here at EnvisionWare, Inc. On October 29, the first self-service 24 Hour Library in the United States was unveiled at the Pioneer Library System in Norman, Oklahoma. For all of us at the company, this event represented the culmination of years of intensive work and preparation, and the capstone of our "Solution Revolution" year. I can still recall my first glimpse of the 24 Hour Library prototype in the EnvisionWare warehouse a couple of years ago. Although it sat inert and without power, it practically hummed with possibility. It clearly had the potential to be a game-changing innovation.

Not too long afterward, I got to know the inner workings of the Library while supporting the EnvisionWare booth at the American Library Association conferences. I got to see firsthand all the moving parts--the hardware and software components coalescing in elegant symbiosis.

The Man in the Purple Shirt (who is not actually wearing a purple shirt in this photo) inside a 24 Hour Library.

We continued refining the product, and it was thrilling to watch each new iteration take shape. Now, in our collaboration with Pioneer, all that hard work has come to fruition. Construction of a second Pioneer 24 Hour Library is now underway, and deployment at a number of other US libraries is soon to follow.

This is what I love about working for EnvisionWare: I get to see dreams--which sometimes seem at first to be pure flights of fancy--manifest themselves in physical form. And I get to see the pleasure and satisfaction these realized dreams bring to our customers. Viva la revolución.