This season we are talking about library programs – giving you some ideas about different ideas you can try in your own library. It is always good to share ideas across libraries, and we are all better! Each week we will look at a different theme of programs.

This week we are shaking off the winter blah feelings, and planning to get outside for a while! Everyone is tired of being cooped up, and we need to think through some ideas to help you and your patrons to get outside and to get moving.

We talk about going outside and doing fun things out there pretty often. You might call it exercise; but it’s fine to think about it as just moving around and having fun. No need to get formal with your programming, unless you really want to. The main point to most programming is to just have fun, and to give your patrons an opportunity to enjoy themselves.

We have a whole podcast series about our Minnesota state parks. Each short episode has a fact about a park, then we suggest six books to go along with that fact. You can listen to the episodes as you trudge around the state parks, or just enjoy listening to books and facts.

Library Gardens:

We have done a couple of podcast episodes on this topic: Season One Episode Eight: Library Gardens, and Episode 801.

There are as many different possibilities for gardens as there are libraries. Here are just a few types of gardens that already exist in libraries:

• Container gardens
• Demonstration gardens, with Master Gardeners in residence
• Seed collections
• Community gardens
• Vegetable gardens, with donations to local shelters and food banks
• Rooftop gardens
• Arboretum of trees
• Aquaponics program

Community gardening

Not everyone is able to garden where they live, due to space limitations or other issues. And some people just enjoy gardening with others. Whatever the reason, a community garden at the library can be a wonderful ongoing program for everyone! The Schreiber Public Library has a community garden they call the Little Sprouts Community Garden.

“Community gardening allows community members to learn and share gardening skills, meet new people and reduce food costs in their homes.” 

The Pottsboro, Texas public library has an active community garden. “The community garden mission is to strengthen community while reinforcing the library as an important anchor institution; enable the cultivation and consumption of wholesome, homegrown food; provide an environment for hands-on education in gardening; provide educational resources, foster an intergenerational gardening experience; and enhance the beauty of neighborhood green space.”

Food

There are other libraries that have designed vegetable gardens. These can be grown and worked by library staff, or by community members. The libraries that have these gardens then often donate the produce to kids who worked in the garden, or to local food banks.

The public library in Orlando, Florida has had good luck with their garden. “Although patrons have full access to the plants, they have never been picked, poked, or vandalized in any way. This is the third year of our garden. We have grown strawberries, potatoes, carrots, assorted herbs, beans, peas, and peppers. The children in my environmental club care for the plants and are rewarded by harvesting the vegetables and herbs.”

The public library in Shreveport, Louisiana grows food with local people in mind. “This is the second year that we have had a community garden and have planted and harvested crops throughout the entire year, with a focus on introducing new vegetables and fruit to the community. This program was devised with the entire family in mind and has yielded great fruit.”

Helping kids, and people of all ages, to get more acquainted with veggies of all types is a good goal for any garden. “Pizza, salsa, or salad gardens—in which ingredients for those dishes are grown, harvested, and prepared at the end of summer—are popular programs. “I’ve seen a kid pick up a piece of raw kale, eat it, and pronounce it delicious,” says Karen McIntyre, a librarian at the Westmeade Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee.”

Indoor gardens

You can set up a lot of different kinds of gardens inside a library. This might be useful for libraries without a lot of outdoor space, or libraries in places – like Minnesota – that have a lot of cold weather. 

Setting up container gardens is an obvious, and easy, strategy for hosting indoor gardens. Giving kids cups, dirt, and a few seeds, then letting them do some planting – either to stay in the library or to take home – is a fun way to let kids get started on some gardening projects. And don’t forget about adults! Many of us like gardening cups and seeds too!

Some libraries have plants in pots around the library, and kids can be responsible for watering them, and harvesting any herbs or flowers being grown there. Building other small containers in the library is not too hard, and you can find a lot of information and ideas for both building and decorating them.

And there are a few libraries that have really gone the extra mile with their gardens, to make aquaponic systems! One of our members: Talahi Elementary School, started an aquaponic garden a couple of years ago. “Fourth-grade students Talahi Community Elementary School are harvesting plants from their aquaponic systems. Many were surprised at how good the food tastes. They also labeled and recorded parts of a plant. Now they’re conducting an experiment on how water travels in plants.” (If you follow the link in our shownotes page, you can see pictures of the kids and garden!)

“At the Cranbury School in Cranbury, New Jersey, media specialist Kelly Fusco started an aquaponics program in the cafeteria. A large tank houses goldfish, while mint, basil, and bell peppers grow in a mixture of rocks and water. These plants, along with strawberries grown in small pots, get nutrients from fish waste, and the system is replenished with rain water. First- and fourth-graders work together to feed the fish and monitor the plants.”

The public library in Gwinnett County, Georgia set up tower gardens. And these towers of veggies growing in the library has helped connected them to the community in new ways. “When Wilson and her team started conducting research on Tower Gardens—self-sustaining, aeroponic gardens that grow vertically using water and minerals to feed the plant—they discovered that there was much more need in the community than they had thought. “One of the things we found when we were conducting research ahead of our grant application is that Gwinnett County has a lot of food deserts,” said Charles Pace, Executive Director of GCPL. “There is a lack of good nutrition education and a high rate of obesity. Knowing that, we saw these towers as educational tools aimed at all ages to solve some of these health issues the county was facing.””

Library Olympics

University of Dayton Libraries

This sounds really fun!

“On a rare sunny but cool June day in Dayton, Ohio, the University of Dayton Libraries staff competed (and excelled in!) the inaugural Library Olympics. Developed by the professional development team, led by Erik Ziedses des Plantes, the day featured journal Jenga, journal toss, cart racing, book balancing, speed sorting and a scavenger hunt that played out on Twitter.

Randomly assigned teams quickly had to strategize how to stack journals the highest in the first event, journal Jenga. (All journals used for the event were marked for recycling.) Competitors exuded speed, strength and cat-like reflexes jumping out of the way when the tenuous towers teetered and fell.

Teams then moved through the circuit of other events. The journal toss provided everyone an opportunity to demonstrate creativity with their throwing form. Competitors aimed for the target on a tarp, and points were awarded accordingly.

In the speed sort, players were timed as they quickly sorted a shelf of books by Library of Congress call number. My colleague was overheard saying, “I didn’t know I would need my reading glasses at the Olympics.” At the book balance station, everyone balanced bound journals on their heads for as far as they could walk.

Best of all was the book cart racing event. Even walking with a book cart is difficult, so the organizers amped it up a bit by having us run a course with multiple turns. Competitors swapped stories and strategy, and in the end, the mantra was “just let the cart lead you.”

The final event called on us to find examples of objects around campus corresponding to 25 Library of Congress call numbers. We submitted our photos via Twitter using the hashtag #udlibpic. One point was awarded for each successful interpretation of a call number.

At the end of the games, numbers were tallied, and the awards ceremony commenced. With much anticipation, it was announced that my team won by one point.”

Story Walks

From the Peoria, AZ Public Library: 

“Developed in 2007 by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT, in collaboration with the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, StoryWalk® is an innovative way for children to read and play outdoors at the same time. Typically, laminated pages from a children’s book are attached to wooden stakes or metal stands and installed along an outdoor path. As individuals stroll down the trail, they are directed to the next page in the story and to do a related activity. StoryWalks have been installed in 50 states and 13 countries. Everyone can now experience the library in an unconventional setting, which combines the pleasures of reading with the beauty of nature!”

They also have a video about their story walk program.

“Located at the Burlington County Library in Westampton, StoryWalk® is an outdoor reading experience created to promote physical activity, early literacy and family time together in nature.

A vividly illustrated book is deconstructed and shared page by page as you stroll, walk, skip or run along a path by the amphitheater next library. Plus, literacy tips and activity challenges will entertain your whole family along the way.

With the help of our community partners, StoryWalk® is a permanent installation. We invite you to keep coming back to discover new books and activities that celebrate nature, diversity and community.”

There are hundreds of story walks around the country, at all kinds of libraries. This can be a great way to encourage reluctant readers to try some new stories. And it can be a way to get groups or families to enjoy being in the library – even when it’s not something they would usually choose. 

Developing these outdoor programs can be a really handy tool for building community. They can be a great way to encourage people who might not think of the library as something relevant or important to them. Too many people in any community of potential users just think of us as dusty archives of books that they have no interest in reading. We are filled with books, of course; but outdoor programs can help to connect our worth with the needs of patrons who may not even realize we are here for them.

Books Read

Now, let’s get to the part of every episode that is everyone’s favorite: sharing books! We will link to these books on our shownotes pages, and the link will take you to Amazon. You probably know this, but when you click one of our links and then buy anything at all from Amazon, they give us a small percentage of their profits. That support really helps us, and although it’s anonymous so we won’t know it was you – we appreciate you taking the time to help us!

• The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier, by Ian Urbina
  There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.
  
  Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways—drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil, and shipping industries, and on which the world’s economies rely.
  
  Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.
  
  
• Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher
  The bestselling author of Postcards from the Edge comes clean (well, sort of) in her first-ever memoir, adapted from her one-woman Broadway hit show. Fisher reveals what it was really like to grow up a product of “Hollywood in-breeding,” come of age on the set of a little movie called Star Wars, and become a cultural icon and bestselling action figure at the age of nineteen.

Intimate, hilarious, and sobering, Wishful Drinking is Fisher, looking at her life as she best remembers it (what do you expect after electroshock therapy?). It’s an incredible tale: the child of Hollywood royalty—Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher—homewrecked by Elizabeth Taylor, marrying (then divorcing, then dating) Paul Simon, having her likeness merchandized on everything from Princess Leia shampoo to PEZ dispensers, learning the father of her daughter forgot to tell her he was gay, and ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.

Conclusion

This was a quick overview of a few ideas that you might want to use in your library. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to everything discussed today. We are looking forward to chatting with you all season! We will have more ideas to help you keep your library running well, and strategies to help you serve your community.

And if you want to hear more book suggestions, be sure you are also subscribed to our other podcast: Reading With Libraries. Short episodes drop every Tuesday, and we look at different aspects of Minnesota. This season we look at a different historic site across the state each week, and then suggest six books that reference the site. Join us each week!