It's a sticky subject in the library world: is it appropriate for public libraries to charge a fee for patrons to participate in programs?
I'm not trying to take sides, but rather illuminate some of the reasons why libraries might charge fees and to start what I hope will be a productive dialogue about this emerging dilemma.
Last year, I wrote about how you can use conditional formatting in Excel to track important deadlines for promoting library programs. In order to ensure that I remember to send something out to the more than 14 communication channels that we routinely utilize at the William H. Hannon Library, these customized spreadsheets have been indispensable.
âProgramming with Library of Congress Digital Collectionsâ 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 Summer Sidewalk Poetry Competition celebrates the poets of Pottsboro, Texas. The competition recognizes five poets from our community and engages the senses and emotions of our residents with delight and inspiration.
Approximately five poems from local poets were curated, made into stencils and painted on sidewalks and pedestrian pathways throughout Pottsboro.
Our library is located a few miles from a shooting that took place in Highland Park, Illinois last summer. As the one-year mark of the shooting approached, our library wanted to provide an opportunity for our community to demonstrate their compassion for our neighbors in Highland Park.
We asked patrons to stop by the library lobby to pick up paper and instructions to create an origami paper crane, a symbol of hope and healing during challenging times. Our goal was to create 1,000 paper cranes.
A June 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan is often considered to be the beginning of the gay liberation movement in the United States. In June 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton declared the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising every June as Pride Month in the United States.
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.
In 1827, the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, appointed a three-person committee to start a library. The committee suggested that âit is expedient to raise sixty dollars, by a tax, to purchase books for said library.â The precursor of the Cary Library, one of the nationâs oldest, was thus established.
The Madison Public Library Naturalist-in-Residence encouraged our community to explore, learn and reflect upon the natural world through accessible nature-based experiences guided by a local naturalist.
Tulsa City-County Library has had a seed library at some locations since 2014 but the pandemic hit just as Tulsaâs spring planting season began. We were completely closed until mid-May 2020. Meanwhile, everybody and their brother had taken up gardening. How could we get as many seeds as possible in Tulsa gardens while offering only curbside service?
Itâs fair to say that COVID made for a meaningful â and very steep â learning experience for librarians. We became adept at virtual programs, no-touch lending, adopting social distancing, health and safety rules and much, much more.
With a scarily accurate algorithm, TikTok will fill up your âFor You Pageâ with an endless scroll of videos tailor-made to your interests and humor. Chances are, if you keep scrolling, youâll come across a library TikTok.
In 1976, Alice Hagemeyer was a newly appointed staff person at the DC Public Library. As a deaf librarian, she quickly experienced culture shock and a rude awakening as she met and spoke with librarians.
Mackenzee Grzesiak, reference librarian at Alpha Park Public Library in Illinois, was watching HBOâs "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" when she connected her work on the libraryâs podcast to the episodeâs coverage of Americaâs current mental health crisis.
âASL (American Sign Language) is becoming hugely popular for hearing people to learn,â says Alicia Deal, public services librarian at Dallas (Texas) Public Library. âAs great as that is, I worry that itâll end up being a passing fad.â
As a librarian, you may face stressful or potentially harmful situations on the job. Maybe youâve recently had a run-in with a patron asking you uncomfortable questions or had a program that was met with protests. What are the best ways to de-escalate these situations? Luckily, they are techniques you probably already have in your librarian toolbox.
To celebrate National Library Week, tween, teen, and adult patrons can create their own mini-libraries at home and then add them to the full display.
History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust is a citizen history project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The project is inviting libraries to research local newspaper coverage on Holocaust-era events between 1933 and 1946 and submit relevant findings to the projectâs database.
While experiencing months of isolation due to COVID-19, conversations about the importance of mental health have come to the forefront.
