Last summer we repeated one of our popular standalone programs – DINOS! It had been a few years since we did this program and, as many of you know, I recycle these themed programs at least every 2-3 years. (unless it’s something very pop culture-y that has dated. But that’s a rarity.) Since last summer…
We did it! We finished another school year of library visits and tours! Lessons were learned, improvements were made, and tons of kids, teachers, and parents visited our main library and our branch library for tours and outreach. I previously wrote up the process of how we do tours for our K-2 visits and people have…
In a way, this event exemplifies everything I think these one day stand-alone programs can be: no matter what you might see, you don’t have to spend a TON of money and endless staff hours creating something that looks like it came out of a party planning book. You don’t have to limit attendance just…
Previously in this series Re-Vamping Summer Reading, Part One: Adding Passive Programming & Tracking Re-Vamping Summer Reading, Part Two: Those Darn Prizes No more cheap plastic crap! No more cheap plastic crap! Keep saying it to yourself (and your administration!) until it is imprinted on your brain. Your summer programs don’t need it, your patrons…
Also in this series: Re-Vamping Summer Reading, Part One: Adding Passive Programming & Tracking Re-Vamping Summer Reading, Part Three: Super-Action Play Packs It is the eternal question of youth services in a public library. What the heck do we do about the darn summer reading prizes? How do we stop kids from cheating? WHY are we…
One of the questions I see come up most often online is “how do you do library tours?” And I understand why because I struggled with this too. How did we make classes visiting our library an actually productive experience instead of just come check-box for teachers to kill an hour? I did a lot of…
Like many of you, I want to provide the homeschoolers in my community with programming relevant and interesting to them. Many homeschoolers are heavy library users so it made sense to design a program for them. Anyway, we’re always looking for more school year programs for school age kids so why not use this demographic?…
One of my co-workers called this “the perfect library program” and I have to agree! It’s also SUPER SIMPLE and BASICALLY FREE and has a huge age range appeal. What’s not to love!? We opened a new branch library after years and years of planning. (My library system only has two locations – our larger main location…
WE DID IT. We survived summer! Ah summer! The most exciting and exhausting time in a public youth services librarian’s life. Even when you’re pulling your hair out, every day has a moment or two that reminds you why you’re doing this whole thing. This summer I decided I wanted to make some BIG and…
I was brainstorming for summer reading when I came up with this program. A lot of the inspiration came from What Color is My World? The Lost History of African-American Inventors by Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Raymond Obstefeld. This book traces the history of several African American inventors who are not widely known. As I was thinking…
