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SAN JUAN ISLAND LIBRARY |
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It's National Library Week – Celebrate your Library
This week, librarians Laura Tretter and Shannan Sword are both attending the Joint Conference of the Oregon and Washington Library Associations where they will have opportunities to network with fellow Northwest librarians, attend programs, and learn about the newest trends in libraries. This conference is especially interesting because it's been 6 years since the Washington and Oregon Library Associations last met together. I anticipate that Laura will share their experiences in an upcoming column. In the meantime, Laura asked that I write this week's column about National Library Week. For 50 years, the American Library Association (ALA) has sponsored National Library Week. The ALA started National Library Week in 1958 with the American Book Publishers to promote reading and now fully sponsors the event. During this week, it's an especially good time to consider how your local library promotes reading. Besides offering a wide variety of new fiction and nonfiction for our patrons varied interests, the San Juan Island Library offers programs each week and throughout the year aimed at reading for all our patrons. For our youngest patrons, we offer an Infant and Toddler Lapsit (in conjunction with the Family Resource Center) on Thursdays from 10-11am and Shannan reads to children at our Preschool Storytime on Fridays from 10:30-11am. Both of these programs expose children to the joys of reading and books. On Monday afternoons, our wonderful volunteers Kathy Babbitt and Dorothy Herron read aloud from a book over a course of a couple of months to a group of elementary aged children; they're currently reading from Anne of Green Gables. Additionally, the library teams up with the Elementary School to sponsor the Reading Buddies Program, which matches adult volunteers with elementary school students who need assistance with reading. For our teens, there is a teen book club that meets every 6-8 weeks to discuss a book and view the film version. And each year, the library sponsors the Teen Writing Contest, which gives teens a chance to flex their writing muscles and share their love of writing with the community. Adults gather together once a month at the library's Literary Salon to discuss books they've read recently. This is a great way to share treasured books with others and get ideas for titles to add to your reading list. As part of the library's program series, Live and Learn, Adrienne Bourne, our Program Coordinator, holds book group discussions and brings authors and poets to the library. Beth Helstien, our Outreach Coordinator, takes books to and reads at the Senior Center and Convalescent Center once a week. She helps readers with vision and audio difficulties find the best technologies to make reading more accessible. Beth has also partnered with Skagit Valley College to offer their ESL classes at the library. As we're nearing summer, we all look forward to Summer Reading Programs for children, teens, and adults. These programs are popular year after year and like all our programs are free and open to the public. Not only are our patrons' reading interests varied, but the way we all like to read and access information is varied. We have audio books, large print books, graphic novels, dvds, magazines and newspapers, and computers. One way or another, there is something to read and discover at your library. If you want something we don't have, we can try to borrow the item from another library or we can consider buying it for our own collection. These are just some of the ways that your library promotes reading. Stop by your library this week (and week after week) and see what your library staff and its volunteers can do for you. Visit our website at www.sjlib.org, peruse our online catalog and find more information about our many programs. And always, if you have a question, please ask us; we love to help you find information and books.
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