Mackenzee Grzesiak, reference librarian at Alpha Park Public Library in Illinois, was watching HBO’s "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" when she connected her work on the library’s podcast to the episode’s coverage of America’s current mental health crisis.
In 2013, Sharon King’s mother, Vivian W. Butts, got sick. With Sharon living in New York and her mother in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the close-knit Black community in Bethlehem rallied to take care of Vivian while Sharon was away.
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).
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.
ALA’s 2017 Preservation Week was April 23 to 29, and although the next one is nearly a year away, I wanted to share a program model that could work at any time and at a variety of institutions.
