Episode 510: Programs

Welcome back to Season Five of Linking Our Libraries!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts. This season we are working through some skills that people in any kind of library will need to be successful in their work.

In this episode we will talk about a fun part of library service – Programs. And by “fun” we mean the traditional definition, but also hard, time-consuming, and exhausting. Programs are integral parts to good library service, so let’s chat about doing them well.

This week we have returning Guest Host Kate, from the Great River Regional Library System, to help us get some ideas!

The Basics:

We are big fans of library programs! Sure, every library has books – paper, audio, and ebook formats – and that’s great. People like them. We have databases, magazines, toys, and all sorts of cool materials. Also great. People like those too. We help people learn to use tablets, create resumes, print documents, find medical information. That’s great too – some  people like those services.

But then there is a big hole in the possibilities of what a library can be in a community. Programs provide that missing link of connecting everyone in the community to the library , to the materials, to the resources, and to the services we provide.

Just off the top of your head, you can probably think of five people you personally know who have no interest in books or reading, don’t need a resume, and don’t want extra information about their medical issues. Those people still matter in a library! They are still part of the community you serve. And you need to do something to encourage them into the library, and to connect them to the great stuff we provide.

Programs can help bring in reluctant library users. They can add value for frequent library users. They can impress the heck out of your funders. They can get good write ups in your organization’s newsletter, or a local newspaper.  They can give you job security.

And the fun thing about programs is that they can be anything! Do you have a topic you enjoy? A hobby? A sports team you root for? Any of that can be the basis of a program! They can involve books, movies, coloring pictures of books, local speakers, Skype authors,  food, beer, knitting, throwing balls, paddling on a river. You can spend a ton of money and time – or you can have a program that doesn’t require much of either.

We are highly in favor of good programming for kids, and that is a great way to show your value. Don’t forget other ages in your library too! If you have college-age or patrons in their 20s, do programs for them. If you have nurses, do a program for them. If you have adults, do some programs for them. Senior citizens? Programs aimed at them will be well-received.

If you are not great at thinking up ideas, or you just aren’t sure where to start, we have links on our shownotes page to all kinds of program ideas. Check out our website, and search for our Spotlight Program series. This was a weekly program that could be designed for any type of library, and generally on very small or nonexistent budgets. We also really like the Programming Librarian website, which is filled with quick write ups from library people across all types of libraries, giving information about creating the programs they have tried.

Additional Resources:

We have talked about a lot of theories and ideas so far today; now let’s get get to the good parts  from Kate on how to make this work in real library work!

Books Read

As always, all the book information we are sharing here is from Amazon.com. If you click on a link, and happen to buy a book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small share of their profits on your sale. Yay! Thanks in advance for your support!

Nancy Drew: The Palace Of Wisdom, by Kelly Thompson

Nancy Drew is seventeen and good at everything…ESPECIALLY solving crimes. But her totally-in-control-and-obviously-running-perfectly-smooth-(but-not-really) life hits a snag when a mysterious message drags her back to the hometown she left behind. There she’ll have to find out which of her friends are still her friends, which are enemies, and who exactly is trying to kill her…and (hopefully) stop them before they succeed.

All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds

A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement?

There were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before.

Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this four-starred reviewed tour de force shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken directly from today’s headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.

Storm Cursed, by Patricia Briggs

My name is Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, and I am a car mechanic.
And a coyote shapeshifter.
And the mate of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin werewolf pack.

Even so, none of that would have gotten me into trouble if, a few months ago, I hadn’t stood upon a bridge and taken responsibility for the safety of the citizens who lived in our territory. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. It should have only involved hunting down killer goblins, zombie goats, and an occasional troll. Instead, our home was viewed as neutral ground, a place where humans would feel safe to come and treat with the fae.

The reality is that nothing and no one is safe.  As generals and politicians face off with the Gray Lords of the fae, a storm is coming and her name is Death.

But we are pack, and we have given our word.

We will die to keep it.

Conclusion

Thanks for working through this topic with us! Be sure you are subscribed to this podcast to get all the library skills directly to your favorite app each week. And you can check out our shownotes for each episode to get all the info we discussed, along with the links to more resources. Every episode we have created is on our website: cmle.org.

If you want to enjoy our book group podcast, subscribe to Reading With Libraries to get a new book, or a whole new genre, each week.

Thank you listening today for joining us! Check back in with us next week for another library competency – we are looking forward to more chatting about library work.