The Social Library, Volume 51
Jennifer Peterson
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09 February 2016
As we wrap up one year of weekly posts in our Social Library series, we continue to see fresh and innovative approaches to library programs and services, shared by libraries we follow on Facebook. This week includes an international partnership, a Chinese New Year celebration, a patron-created video to celebrate Black History Month, a sleepover/readathon, and literary dogs making a difference. If you'd like to see your library featured in the Social Library series, please let us know via [email protected], or find us on Facebook.
- Forsyth County Public Library shared some wonderful photos of their Chinese New Year Celebration. We saw that a number of libraries celebrated over the weekend and others will be this upcoming weekend. We enjoyed this wonderful recap from Lisa, the Post Road Branch Youth Services Supervisor: "Gung hay fat choy! Happy New Year all! We had a big crowd come out to Post Road for the lion dancers today – I just love their energy, the colors, the drums…it is all great! Then they did a drumming demonstration as well. They ended the performance with the lion inviting all the kids to the front to dance to Gangnam Style, while they had lights going and bubbles blowing. After the show, everyone flowed into the library for crafts. We made sparklers out of straws, cello paper and aluminum foil, paper cup dragons, Year of the Monkey bookmarks and stamped red envelopes with gold stamps and placed a chocolate coin in them, in the Chinese tradition. I had fortune cookies and White Rabbit candies for people as they walked out the door. Inside their plastic wrapper, the candies are like vanilla Tootsie Rolls wrapped in rice paper. We discovered this freaks out a lot of people – I can say not just Americans were attempting to peel off the rice paper, when you are just meant to stick it in your mouth to dissolve it. We got to educate a lot of folks who were surprised to find it was edible too."
- The Houston Public Library and the Instituto la Paz, a primary school in Mexico City, have cultivated an exciting partnership over the past year. "In January of 2015, the school’s Director of English, Neil Crawford, approached the library to discuss getting library cards for all 800 students, faculty, and staff at the school. He wanted his students to have access to the databases available on the library website, resources otherwise unavailable to them in Mexico...To encourage their students to continue exploring these and other online resources, the school built a learning lab, equipped with over two dozen computers, so their students could spend time each week researching various topics on the computer and reading E-books." What a fantastic international partnership!
- In North Carolina, patrons at Beatties Ford Regional Library, a branch of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library lent their voices to create this video at right to celebrate important figures in black history as part of Black History Month. The video was created using resources at the library's Satellite Studio.
- Youth at the Seymour Library in Brockport, New York, their BRATS (Brilliant Readers Active in Teen Service) held a BRATS Sleepover/Readathon and raised over $1,000 for the Greater Rochester Teen Book Festival.
- The Greenwood Public Library in Delaware has weekly programs with L.E.A.P. (Literacy Education Assistance Pups) for kids to read with dogs. They recently posted a picture of a new group of dogs getting trained for the program and a link to Reading to Dogs: A Library's Guide to Getting Started. And Public Libraries Online posted this wonderful article, Kids Reading to Dogs in Libraries, with many more examples to learn from.
Thanks to all of this week's featured libraries for such outstanding service to your communities!