Public

Serendipity is Just Another Example of a Good Librarian

By Rebecca B. My story is one similar to so many working parents these days: my husband and I both work full-time while raising young children. Our parents, our children’s grandparents, live in other states. Since the beginning of storytelling on cave walls, we’ve used written communication to teach our children life lessons, and, now … Read more

A Summer Tradition

By Leah W. After school let out and summer was in swing my mom took me and my sister and brother to the library weekly. She knew how important it was to keep learning, reading, and engaging with new concepts even during summer break. That summer tradition had such an impact on me. I feel … Read more

Through the Library to the Stars

By Jonathan K.

Throughout elementary school, I was a fiend for library books. I was continually at my limit at my school’s library and the local public library branch. I learned about history from biographies, British humor from weird picture books, myself from some great kids’ fiction, and spycraft from anything I could get my hands on.

But one day I stumbled across a book with a big blue planet on the cover: ‘Isaac Asimov’s Library of the Universe: Neptune, the Farthest Giant’. This set me off on a course of discovery that took me through the travels of Voyagers 1 and 2, through the Orion Nebula, beyond the globular clusters orbiting our Milky Way’s center, to the Andromeda Galaxy and beyond.

Read moreThrough the Library to the Stars

Mommy-and-Me Dates at the Public Library

By Harmony F.

As mother to a busy-bodied 22 month old, I’m always looking for fun and easy activities to entertain and educate my curious boy, Henry. Henry is a little man on a mission and like most toddlers, prefers to explore his world in very physical ways.

Lucky for us, Henry LOVES books and is willing to sit still through dramatic readings of The Pout-Pout Fish or to lift page-after-page of flaps in search of Spot. The times each morning and night he spends curled up in our laps for story time, are often the only minutes in the day he stops moving. Unlucky for us, he usually loves ONE book at a time, 6-10 times per day.

Have you ever read Pete the Cat: Wheels on the Bus eight times in one day? As cute as Henry’s clumsy choreography is, it can be hard to take. We like to keep our selection of books fresh without breaking the bank.

Read moreMommy-and-Me Dates at the Public Library

Support local small businesses…and watch them grow!

Public libraries support food truck businesses

By Kim Martin

Resources for the Small Business OwnerJorge, a skilled cook and heir to his parents’ restaurant business, has been watching the fast rise of the food truck business. The time and circumstances seem right for him to expand his business by putting a truck on the road. But he wonders…has the trend already peaked? Is this the right idea to pursue?

Jorge and other small business owners in your community are looking for information that can help them understand market conditions, develop business plans, and make informed decisions to succeed. You can provide them with easy-to-use electronic resources that give them instant access to the same resources that Fortune 500 and other successful businesses use.

Be part of your community’s economic growth by providing entrepreneurs the support, information, and planning tools they need to thrive—including online courses, electronic database resources, and eBooks:

Read moreSupport local small businesses…and watch them grow!

Shifting Perception: Valued for what we do

Edmonton Public Library, 2014 Library of the Year

By Tina Thomas

Libraries have been at a crossroads of existence since I joined the Edmonton Public Library (EPL) five years ago – likely well before that and probably for many more years to come. In his article[1] outlining that “being essential” is not enough to sustain libraries, Rick Anderson highlights that an important thing libraries must do is provide value and a return on investment.

We know that if you ask 1000 people if they believe libraries are important the vast majority will say yes. But we also know that those same people may not know what the modern library does or even use the library themselves.

The challenge is libraries are often valued as an institution or idea, not for the services they provide. And, to Rick’s point, if the lofty idea of “essential” is all libraries have, we likely will be challenged to find support for the work we do in a sea of essential services.

Read moreShifting Perception: Valued for what we do

Shifting Perception: Libraries = Education

Frederick Road Howard County Library System

By Valerie J. Gross 

There’s a powerful movement afoot and it’s gaining momentum.

Hailed by Library Journal as “a 21st-century library model, with a position, doctrine, purpose, and curriculum worthy of study and consideration by every other library in America, if not the world,” this effective strategy takes libraries back to their original purpose.

At the turn of the 20th century, libraries were established as educational institutions to deliver equal opportunity in education for everyone. Somehow, a century later, we find ourselves with a diluted purpose—so much so that fully one third of Americans do not know what we do.

Read moreShifting Perception: Libraries = Education