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This Week In History, Library Style! Nov. 18: Traffic

aerial photo of buildings and roads
Photo by Aleksejs Bergmanis on Pexels.com

Libraries are places where we connect people to information that may be useful or interesting to them. Looking at some history, and connecting it to the materials we may have in our libraries, can be a good way to convince patrons to use and enjoy all the things we provide!

This week we are looking at November 18. Of course a lot of things have happened on this date – news and the big stories are the unusual things that are going on around us. One interesting thing that has happened today in 1921: “New York City considers varying work hours to avoid long traffic jams.”

“As demand approaches the capacity of a road (or of the intersections along the road), extreme traffic congestion sets in. When vehicles are fully stopped for periods of time, this is known as a traffic jam or (informally) a traffic snarl-up. Traffic congestion can lead to drivers becoming frustrated and engaging in road rage. Mathematically, traffic is modeled as a flow through a fixed point on the route, analogously to fluid dynamics.”

Bring this historical fact to your library! You can do this with a variety of program and display ideas. We will help you to get started with a few ideas: look at some road maps of big cities, set up a display of books on math and solving problems in math, write an essay about a problem in your community and setting up ways to solve the problem or to find more information about it, draw a picture of a flying car, make a display of books about New York City, make model cars and set up races with them.

Here are a few books you might add to your collection or share with your patrons – or just enjoy yourself!