By Pamela West-Finkle
Thank you SUNY Delhi Students for the Spring Cleanup!
First, a big thank you to the Upsilon-Delta-Epsilon Fraternity and Dalton Waite of SUNY Delhi for providing some helping hands to clean up our flower beds, trim up our bushes, and plant our 2021 pollinator garden. Their community service is much appreciated!
Garden Tour
We are still looking for beautiful gardens and vistas to be part of our 2021 Summer Garden Tour Fundraiser to take place in July. If you’ve been hard at work on your property during the pandemic and feel comfortable having visitors come to appreciate your efforts while raising money for the library, we would love to hear from you! Please contact our point person, Joanne Warner at 917-922-2496
O’Connor Foundation Youth Grants for Summer Programs and Story & Song Take Home Bags
The library would also like to thank the O’Connor Foundation for awarding us $1,000 toward the purchase of supplies for Take Away Song & Story Bags, which will include egg shakers, rhythm sticks, jingle bells, dancing scarves, finger puppets, coloring and writing supplies, and other goodies for families to participate at home with online Story and Song programs or outdoors this summer with Miss Pam’s family music programs, to be held at Bohlmann Park and the West Kortright Centre. Research has shown that early childhood music and literacy activities with caregiver participation greatly enhance cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and language development. In addition to the take home bags, the library will also be receiving its 2020 Youth Grant to bring New York teaching artists Story Laurie and David Wasik to the library for special event outdoor programming. Social distancing and mask wearing will be required. Next month we will publish our entire summer calendar of events.
Writing Contest Reminder
Our Summer Reading Program Tails and Tales writing contest kicks off this month! Write your best tall tale, fable, or folk tale featuring animals and submit it by August 1st for prizes and local publication. Categories are children, teens, and adults. We are also still looking for local businesses who wish to sponsor this contest and provide prizes.
Book Club(s)?
The library board has discussed starting a John Burroughs Book Club. We are still in the fledgling stages of this idea, but this club would read and discuss John Burroughs books and take a field trip to the Woodchuck Lodge and Burrough’s Rock in Roxbury. We may start with one book and see how it goes to determine if it will be an ongoing program.
So far our normal Lit Wits book club meetings on the first Thursday of each month have been suspended due to COVID and we have not heard if they plan to start back up again. We have had some requests to offer multiple book clubs that serve more genres and age groups, to include a teen group. Zoom groups are available as well. If you are interested in participating or helping to facilitate the John Burroughs club, please contact 845-676-3333 or email an.ill@4cls.org.
Quarantine and Amnesty for Library Materials
The new CDC guidance indicates there is very low chance of surface transmission of the COVID-19 virus on library materials. For that reason, we are ending our quarantine on books and movies. You may still put your returns in the plastic bag in the drop box on the porch, but you can also bring them in during open hours. All items get disinfected before reshelving.
Since we will no longer have to quarantine items, however, we will soon be ending our amnesty on fines and we will soon have our catalog online through the Four County Library System (www.4cls.org) and fines will be charged automatically – ten cents per day on books and $1 per day on movies that are returned late. As of June 1st, we will begin to charge late fines again, so please get your books and movies returned in time, and if you need more time, please reach out to 845-676-3333 or an.ilol@4cls.org to ask for a renewal. On interlibrary loans through 4cls, you can log into your own account and renew online provided there isn’t a hold on the item.
Volunteers!
We are actively looking for volunteers who would like to cover the desk several hours per week, help disinfect and re-shelve returns, and help with programs and events. Training is available Monday through Thursday. If you love libraries and have some extra time to serve your community, we would love to have you!~