This month, I’ve handed the spotlight to a dear friend who always knows what obscure holiday it may be and how to celebrate it! Kami Bumgardner is the youth services coordinator at Maitland Public Library in Maitland, Fla., and works primarily with toddlers and kids through fifth grade. Any questions or comments will be forwarded to her. Enjoy!
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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.
MegaMania is an annual event that aims to bring educational aspects of comic book and cosplay culture to youth who may not otherwise have access to large comic cons. Though planned primarily for teens, people of all ages are welcome to attend and explore cosplay opportunities, gaming demonstrations, local author panels, art workshops and more.
The term “community conversation” refers to a mediated discussion among the members of a community. They have been used for a variety of purposes, and research shows that they can be incredibly beneficial.
This teen and adult program uses Library of Congress women’s suffrage primary sources, alongside your library’s own databases and physical holdings, to explore the non-conformist, creative and subversive ways that suffragists educated and agitated for the right to vote.
This teen or adult program uses Library of Congress women’s suffrage primary sources, such as letters, diaries, women’s self-published information sources and other ephemera, to examine how suffragists documented their activism and feelings on women’s rights and social issues of the time.
Program attendees use current magazines, newspapers, flyers, ephemera and personal effects to start their own scrapbook and create their own DIY personal history (that might become a future primary source!).
This hands-on button-making program for teens or adults uses primary sources to explore photographs, slogans and political ephemera of the women’s suffrage movement. Attendees will view examples of historical women’s suffrage buttons and discuss how they were used as marketing pieces.
Are you looking to add some historical context and deepen conversation in your book club? Do you have a group of patrons who enjoy history titles? Pairing primary source analysis with a reading and discussion program is a great way to add another layer of history and information skills to a program your library may already offer.
For those interested in primary sources, the Library of Congress — the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections — is a veritable treasure trove. And you don’t have to go to Washington, D.C. to access its materials; millions of primary sources are freely available in the Library’s digital collections.
Small and rural libraries that received funding from ALA’s Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC): Focus on Small and Rural Libraries initiative often developed conversation series that built on previously established partnerships and existing programming.
With funding from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, ALA has published “Programming with Primary Sources: Women’s Suffrage,” a resource guide to inspire and help library workers bring primary source inquiry into their book clubs, crafts and other library programs.
Community engagement is a key component to the work of all library types. In fact, knowledge of the community is one of the 9 Core Library Programming Competencies as identified by NILPPA (the National Impact of Library Public Programs Assessment).
Small and rural libraries face a variety of unique challenges. The problem of misinformation is one of them.
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.
Deborah Smith thought that the town of Essex, Connecticut was relatively affluent. Her research on the town’s demographics, however, told a different story.
The town of Circle, Montana has a population of about 600 people. It is an isolated place, a place where the nearest Walmart is over 100 miles away. This being the case, Circle residents often depend on their local library as a place to find resources, build connections and strengthen relationships.
Sulphur, Oklahoma, is a small town of approximately 5,000 people. Its library, Parker Memorial Library, is one out of eight branches in the Southern Oklahoma library system.
Laurel (Del.) Public Library is, as assistant director and head of circulation Wenona Phillips explains, an untraditional library. But it wasn’t always this way.
Libraries participating in Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC): Focus on Small and Rural Libraries were encouraged to share information about their programming and its outcomes through letters to local elected officials.
