This program was offered as part of Thinking Money exhibit, a traveling exhibit about financial literacy offered by the ALA Public Programs Office and the FINRA Foundation.
Every branch in the Mid-Continent Public Library system with display cabinets asks the community to share their interests and collections with neighbors, allowing for civic engagement and community building. Our displays have included local artists, humanitarian organizations, children, teens, adults, local clubs, schools and many others.
A one-mile walk in Boise, Idaho, on April 18 took an unusually long 90 minutes. The 103 walkers weren’t merely out for an evening stroll on this Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). They were participating in a Holocaust Remembrance Walk that visited three key sites, hosted by multiple community partners who collaborated to make the event happen.
On July 5, 1934, the “By the Way” column on Page 2 of the Bulloch Times (Statesboro, Georgia) contained several short blurbs on national news. The first item reported that “holding sway over all other matters” was the sweltering 102-degree heat in the nation’s capital. The second item congratulated U.S. Sen. William E. Borah of Idaho on his 69th birthday. The third blurb expressed dismay at Hitler’s June 30 purge of the Storm Troopers, a Nazi Party paramilitary group.
After seeing all the poignant imagery that is part of the Americans and the Holocaust traveling exhibition, Joa LaVille had the strongest emotional reaction to … a pie chart. LaVille, youth services manager at the Marshalltown Public Library in Iowa, which received a grant to display the exhibition in 2022, was struck by a graphic illustrating the results of a 1938 public opinion poll.
“History is often associated with the past — events of someone or something not connected with us. There is nothing like a global health crisis, however, to realize we are making and living history right now.”Â
So began a March 23, 2020, open letter to the community from archivist and local history librarian Monique Sugimoto with the Palos Verdes Library District (PVLD).
Let Out the Banksy in You was a passive companion program to Banksy Booked @KHPCL, the theme for a number of active and passive programs to coincide with a six-week exhibit of Banksy’s “Haight Street Rat” street art.
Banksy Booked @KHCPL made the Kokomo-Howard County Public Library (KHCPL) the first library in the world to host a Banksy.Â
In this passive program, we simply used primed plywood and markers to invite patrons to try their own hands at street art.