Books & Bites, a delightful cooking demonstration presented by St. Johns County librarians, combines our love of literature and food. We take a popular title, book or TV show, and look at historical events that surround it.Â
Topics have included "Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania," paired with the menu from the ship; "True Grit," paired with campfire cooking; and "Before We Were Yours," paired with Southern cuisine. We have offered the program since 2015.
This event was a large-scale (approximately 140 people), 10-mile bike ride through Chicago's South Side neighborhoods, where violence erupted during the Chicago Race Riots of July 1919.
Facilitated by Blackstone Bicycle Works, a community-based nonprofit, and in partnership with other community-based groups, the tour started at the only marker of the riots in the city — at 29th Street and the lakefront — and then moved through the neighborhoods of Bronzeville, Bridgeport, the Stockyards and back to the lake.
Public libraries are invited to apply for Revisiting the Founding Era, a nationwide project that will use historical documents to spark public conversations about the Founding Era’s enduring ideas and themes and how they continue to influence our lives today.
“Programming with Library of Congress Digital Collections” is a new LibGuide designed to help libraries explore the thousands of primary sources available from the Library of Congress (LOC) online collection.
The guide focuses on eight LOC collections (Arts, Civics, Folklife, History, Literature, Maps, Military Experience and STEM) with collection highlights and suggested program ideas that are accessible and adaptable for various library types and audiences.
The Oregon Trail Live Action Simulation challenged teens and young adults to use financial literacy skills and historical knowledge of the Oregon Trail to complete a full simulated run of the historical trail, with references to the original video game.
The Titanic Dinner invites guests to select real Titanic passenger tickets from a blind draw. Guests sit with their selected class (1st, 2nd or 3rd), and have dinner while watching a history lesson from a historical impersonator.
At the end of the dinner, patrons discover the fates of their selected passengers and whether or not they were survivors of the sinking.
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.
This program was hosted in honor of Black History Month. I am of Gullah-Geechee descent and wanted to share and preserve my culture by teaching others.
The kit includes brown felts for making the dolls and West African textiles for dressing them. The kit also includes 'found objects' like sea shells, feathers, buttons and beads to adorn the dolls, an infographic about the Gullah-Geechee heritage and a free virtual tour of the 'Cum Yah Gullah' Exhibit at the Fort Bend Children's Discovery Center.
It’s fair to say that COVID made for a meaningful — and very steep — learning experience for librarians. We became adept at virtual programs, no-touch lending, adopting social distancing, health and safety rules and much, much more.
Humanities topical immersion programming engages college communities regarding social issues. The immersions consist of a three-pronged approach of a VR experience, a film screening and an online/in-person discussion.
Lore of the Land was a speaker series made up of 12 sessions. Each session focused on the cultural, historical and musical events that formed the state of Nebraska.
Our speakers were brought to us through Humanities Nebraska. If you want to conduct a similar speaker series at your library, try reaching out to your state's humanities council.
For the past four years, Monique Sugimoto has commuted to her job at the Palos Verdes Library District on an electric bike — a scenic ride along the cliffs in her coastal California town. As she rode, her librarian brain was hard at work.
“When I came across historic locations, I would devise these little tours in my head,” Sugimoto says. “When the pandemic struck, I thought, how great would it be if I could bring these tours out of my head and into people’s homes?” And that is exactly what she did.
In 1970, Loudon County, Tenn., celebrated its centennial anniversary. The day of contests and parades culminated with a mock funeral, with participants burying a pine casket filled with personal mementos and letters to be opened 50 years later at the sesquicentennial anniversary.
Unfortunately, unearthing the time capsule was not the joyous occasion the community anticipated. On June 20, 2020, residents dug up the pine box to find it destroyed by water and most of its contents ruined.
August 18, 2020, marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote. The United States Senate recently designated August as Women’s Suffrage Month.
To help celebrate this new resolution, we compiled a list of resources to inform and help librarians with programming ideas to teach this important history.
National History Day (NHD) projects have been part of our collaborative library programming for years. They are a great way for students to learn the research process in a deep and meaningful manner, meeting many National School Library Standards. It's also a great way for students to practice the various literacies: news, information, media and digital.Â
What obligation do public libraries have to present and tackle difficult historical topics? What special opportunities can we present to our communities to dive into new or difficult histories?
Public humanities work in public libraries is essential. The core mission of public humanities work is to provide opportunities for people to expand their knowledge and understanding of the world and the human experience, to promote understanding of and form relationships with other people, and to expand our understanding of the past and present.
How do you engage your community with local history? How do you connect your community with history that may not be well known or visible today? One answer for the Princeton (N.J.) Public Library (PPL) is our Open Archive program series, offered in partnership with the Historical Society of Princeton (HSP).
Our library has a collection of American Girl Dolls and a multicultural collection with artifacts from all over the world. Both circulating collections are very popular.
We decided to create a program linking the artifacts to the historical American Girl dolls based on the characters’ causes, the beliefs they stood for, and what their corresponding books are about.
To celebrate the arrival of the touring production of "Hamilton," and as part of the WCPL’s  Becoming American: A Documentary Film and Discussion Series on Our Immigration Experience programs exploring and celebrating the history of immigration in the U.S., we staged "Hamilton" Tea Parties, or HamilTeas, throughout the month of November.  
