iowastatelibrary's blog

Winterset is a rural community of approximately 5,200 in central Iowa, about 30 miles southwest of Des Moines. Residents can dine at the few eateries in town, but with the abundance of gardens and fresh ingredients available, patrons are often looking for ideas to create their own meals.

Anamosa is a community of 5,533 in eastern Iowa, and it's quite remote. Many families drive 30 to 50 minutes to the nearby cities of Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Dubuque looking for family activities.

Our residents are always looking for things for kids to do close to home, so the Anamosa Library & Learning Center put together a spring-long, superhero-themed program series for all ages, culminating in a private showing of “Avengers: Endgame” at a movie theater in Cedar Rapids. 

There are plenty of reasons for libraries to collaborate. Partnering with other organizations and people increases your resources, increases your reach, promotes creativity, models teamwork for others, and helps your community work toward common goals. Lest we forget, libraries have a lot to offer our partners, too; we are trusted, well situated for exposure and usually pretty competent in marketing our programs and services.

A makerspace — for anyone who isn’t yet aware — is a collaborative workspace where people have the opportunity to construct or explore just about anything they can imagine.

The goal of a library makerspace is to let patrons learn through hands-on experimentation and from collaboration with others. And yes, that CAN be achieved in a small library. Griswold Public Library, located in a small town of about 1,000 in southwestern Iowa, is proof.

I had just begun my job as director of the Malvern Public Library when I decided to kick off my first summer at the library with the launch of my brainchild, the Comics & Cosplay Club.

The club quickly became our most popular program. Fandom is a great way to bring people together, and I have developed a meeting plan that provides structure and variation to our Comics & Cosplay Club nights.

Corning Public Library serves a town of 1,500 in southwest Iowa. There's not a lot in Corning; we are the largest town in our county, the nearest city is a 90-minute drive away.

The library is especially important in communities like ours, as we provide programming that both entertains and inspires. Hosting an Amazing Race program allowed us to entertain our patrons while showing them that they don’t have to travel to find interesting things to do with their friends and families.    

At Slater (Iowa) Public Library, we find that it's usually tough to get adults to attend programs. But we have also seen a few notable exceptions, one of which is our Soup and Sound program. As the name suggests, this consists of serving a meal and providing entertainment to attendees. Soup and Sound is not only popular — it's fun, community-building, and we've been able to cover our program costs with donations.