Sunday, November 9th
11:30-12:15
*** Room monitor****
Jennifer Baker, St. Helena Director
Leslie Stanton, St. H
Sue Michel, St. H
This was a program I would not have ordinarily chosen, I was helping as a room monitor. Was still interesting!
St. Helena (Northern Ca. wine country) serves 6,000 and a finalist for Library Journal's Best Small Library in America 2014.
The program started with looking at the benefits of being a small library. I kind of thought that could have been cut out - just by highlighting programs, etc. it's a bit redundant. However, I think everyone enjoyed it in the crowd, I'm assuming most were from a small library and needed a moment to celebrate why they were great.
Why small libraries are great - can make changes quickly, no bureaucracy, if something needs to be done you can just do it, opportunity to connect more easily with patrons, closer relationships.
Great things they got to do because they were a small library - paint the teen room bright colors, offer a variety of programs including a beer tasting with a microbrewer, dance program, moving out all the furniture of the library, have a library cat ...
Elsie the Library Cat Facebook Page
which they would love you to like on Facebook!
They did also talk about just a few of the difficulties - funding, taking on trends - be careful to devote money and resources to untested trends, let bigger systems test a trend before committing, small town "talk" everyone knows everyone.
Not sure how I'd feel about living in a small town, but I'd have no complaints about dancing, beer and library cats.
ReplyDelete:) Right!
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