Oklahoma Librarian

What is National Library Week?   This is an annual celebration highlighting the valuable role libraries, librarians, and library workers play in transforming lives and strengthening our communities. ALA picks an honorary chair and has posters and social media graphics that everyone can use.  Our library system wanted to do something speical to promote this week and a speical event called Literary Voices happening in Oklahoma. I made a passive program in the children's area that I called "Guess How Many Books are in the Children's Section".  What I did to prepare I did not count all the books! The system we use for inventory tells us how many books are in the collection. I just needed to run a report for each section such as Tween Fiction and Tween Non-fiction.  We have a white board that we use for passive programming that worked great for this. I put out some small sticky notes and pencils for guests to write on. The board said "How many items are in the child...

  What is a take home kit? A take home kit is where we put together crafts for guests to take and do at home. A library program in a bag with instructions if you will. These kits can range widely from soap-making for teens to gluing colorful streamers to a cloud for toddlers. I aim to make kits for elementary-aged kids from 6 - 11 years old. Below, I have the poster, description, and instructions. I found that I rarely get feedback on kits but I'll mention it if there was any. Feel free to copy any of these!  The Kits This is a cute spring time kit that was left over from our crafternoon event. I purchased some pattern paper  and cut them up into small squares. We had a lot of green paper from other crafts that I used as well. The colver that is used as a base was cut out by our Cricut. I put together 30 kits. Event Description: The word "shamrock" comes from the Gaelic "seamróg," which means "little clover." Make your own little clover with this kit w...

What is a take home kit? A take home kit is where we put together crafts for guests to take and do at home. A library program in a bag with instructions if you will. These kits can range widely from soap-making for teens to gluing colorful streamers to a cloud for toddlers. I aim to make kits for elementary-aged kids from 6 - 11 years old. Below, I have the poster, description, and instructions. I found that I rarely get feedback on kits but I'll mention it if there was any. Feel free to copy any of these!  The Kits I only did one kit this month but it's too cute not to share. This one requires a lot of white yarn, pony beads, and felt. I recommend using hot glue but liquid glue will work if you're willing to wait. The pictures in the instructions are very important for this kit since it can be hard to make a pom pom if you've never done it before. This one is perfect for the start of spring and kids can hopefully see real bunnies outside alongside the one they make. Ev...

I found a book while making a display that gave me the delusional idea that I could make a giant memory and scrabble game out of wood for our Summer Reading Kickoff event. I'm going to talk about the memory game here in case anyone ever wants to see how much work it would be to do this themselves.  The first step was to purchase the wood and cut it into squares. This was the easiest part since the book told me how much wood I needed, and Home Depot will cut wood purchased from them for free. I got 1 sheet of plywood that was 1/4 in. x 4 ft. x 8 ft. for about $30. I asked them to cut it into squares of 6 in. I worked with an assistant manager at Home Depot, and she offered to cut everything at her home workstation and text me when it was done. I was able to pick it up the next day and get started with the next steps.  I picked out the best-looking 30 squares and sanded the edges down. This particular wood has an issue with its layers peeling away which was frustrating. I would ...