Blogs

A year and a half into the pandemic, I’m contemplating a fall semester that might be more like fall 2019 than fall 2020, though the COVID-19 delta variant continues to loom like a specter over my financial literacy programming plans.

Through it all, I’m mostly thinking about what to keep from a fully remote year and how to most effectively prepare for a potential pivot back to remote delivery or other unexpected changes.

ALA seeks feedback from the library field on “Skills for 21st-Century Librarians: Learning Objectives for Library Programming,” a document marking the Association’s next steps toward the creation of a programming curriculum for library workers and students.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to face some unexpected truths. Many of us quickly realized, while quarantined in our living rooms-turned-workspaces, that all the technology in the world could not replace human connection. We missed our neighbors, classmates and colleagues — our sense of community.

Your library might hesitate to offer financial literacy programming because of concerns about giving financial advice or setting up an opportunity for uncomfortable money questions. These concerns might be hard to navigate at first, but if the entire library staff is appropriately trained on handling financial literacy-related questions, you can mitigate these issues.

When you set out to plan a new program for your library, you likely think about content first. What information will you cover? What will the program be named? What are your goals, and how will you achieve them based on your budget and resources? This is the process we have come to know as “program planning.”

I feel like I should start with a disclaimer: I am not a financial professional. I am a librarian.

Library workers need to be skilled in outreach and marketing so they can promote their libraries’ programs and services and advocate for their organizations. But in many MLIS programs, skills like outreach and marketing — things that many programming librarians do every day, but that fall outside the “typical” librarian job description — often go untaught, leaving workers to learn on the job.

May is Older Americans Month, first proclaimed by Gerald Ford in 1976. The past year has been challenging for all Americans, but the consequences of the pandemic fell heavily on older Americans and their families and caregivers. A unique challenge that many older Americans face is money management.

Remember summer reading as it used to be? When your library was packed to the gills with kids clamoring to see a magician? Or your book clubs, ca. 2019, when everyone shared food and gossip and germs, all stuffed inside your tiny meeting space?

We’ve surpassed the one-year mark of the pandemic and find ourselves facing another Money Smart Week in a virtual environment. I know many libraries had to scrap last year’s in-person Money Smart Week plans or scramble to develop online replacements at the last minute.