Read On! Imagination Library

Last spring, the Oklahoma State Legislature passed Senate Bill 1803 establishing the framework for the state to help pay for children to enroll in the Dolly Parton Imagination Library program. Our Friends of the Library Group made the Imagination Library part of its literacy initiative several years ago and is excited that the State sees its value.

Getting print materials into the home of children is important to increasing a community’s literacy levels, so the Imagination Library provides a free, age-appropriate book each month for children until their 5th birthday. The Friends of the Pryor Creek Library have about 200 Mayes County children enrolled right now. They’d love to have more!

After receiving the introductory book (“The Little Engine That Could”) each book is chosen specifically for the child’s age and developmental stage. The books are good quality and contain tips for caregivers to help teach children the early literacy skills that are so vital.

When my son was young, we signed up for the Imagination Library where we lived. He loved getting mail every month and we loved seeing his bookshelf grow! I was also impressed that some of the books we received were recent publications. This truly is a wonderful program.

While the books are free for all children signed up for the program, the sponsoring organization does pay about $25 per year per child. Considering the normal cost of books, this is an amazing deal for the Friends Group too. Once the State figures out where the money will come from, SB 1803 creates a fund to help sponsoring organizations pay their portion.

If you know a child living in Mayes County who is under 5 years old who would like a free book each month, come to the Library to get an application or visit Nette at any Main Street event or parade.

Read On! National Library Week

Happy National Library Week! The first full week in April is the week each year the American Library Association uses to acknowledge and appreciate libraries and library workers. It’s probably not something you regularly mark on your calendars, but it’s a big deal in the library world.

My favorite day in National Library Week each year is Tuesday: National Library Workers’ Day. It’s my favorite because now I get to tell you how wonderful your library staff is!

I can honestly say that each person who works with me at the library (including our two bonus staff members who are part of the City’s custodial staff) is a genuinely wonderful human being that I am proud to work with. Each staff member believes in doing a job well, so we strive to give our community the best service possible. Between us, I am confident we can connect our patrons to whatever resource or delightful recommendation they need.

This last year has been one of the most challenging years anyone can remember. Our service model changed from being the “community’s living room” where anyone can come and hang out as long as they’d like to being the “community’s literary and information cupboard” where patrons get what they need and go elsewhere to use it.

That transition could have been excruciating. Luckily, this staff understands our situation and is flexible enough to flow with the changes we need to make. And they did it with good humor and grace.

In the coming months, we will be working in a literal construction site. This brings its own challenges, but I am thankful to get to go through the stress and excitement of an expansion project with the staff we have. They make coming to work every day a delight!

If you come in this week, please be sure to let your library staff know how wonderful they are.

Read On! Vol. 158 Expiring Accounts

Once a year, every account in our library system needs to be renewed. We try to make renewing your account pretty simple: call or come in to verify your contact information, then you’re good for another year. You even get to keep your old card. Easy-peasy.

Accounts expire so we can maintain current records for each patron account. Mostly, we need to make sure we have correct contact information in the event that a patron forgets to return an item or leaves something important in library material they’ve returned. Plus, the Oklahoma Department of Libraries requires that we keep current patron records in order to receive our annual State Aid grant.

When your account expires, our system blocks you from being able to use our computers, use Overdrive or Libby, and from being able to check out materials. Renewing your account reactivates all of those systems within a matter of minutes.

We also try to keep the accounts in our system current, so we use long-expired accounts as the basis for purging old records. We assume if you haven’t been in to renew your account in 3 or more years, you’ve either moved or decided to find library services elsewhere. As long as these expired accounts don’t owe us lost materials, they’re deleted.

If your account expired long enough ago that it was deleted from our system but you want to use the library again, we’ll treat it like a brand new account. For that, we need to see your photo ID and a piece of mail that has your current address on it. There’s a short form to fill out and you’re all set.

Of course, you’re welcome to sign up for a digital library account through our website. A digital account gives you access to use everything we have available online. The only thing you can’t do with a digital account is take physical materials home.

Language Learning

I doubt it’s surprising to anyone that the library staff likes to learn new things. One of the joys of answering questions (about 1,700 each month) is learning with our patrons. We’ve learned crafts, recipes, repairs, trivia and more thanks to the questions that come to our desks. We also get to learn about the various cultures in our community and hear the languages that are spoken here. Thanks to this inspiration, several of us are brushing up on some non-English languages. Spanish, German, French, and American Sign Language top our lists right now.

We have an online resource, Mango Languages, available to anyone with a Pryor Library account that we’re using for our spoken language lessons (we’re using other resources to learn ASL). Mango has more than 70 different languages available online and through their app. It’s very user-friendly and the lessons are geared to get new speakers into conversations quickly.

Mango also offers English courses for non-native speakers. These courses use various mother tongues as their foundations to make them more useful for non-English speakers. I took enough French in school that I can confirm the English lessons (at least the ones based in French) are just as useful and easy to navigate as the other language lessons are.

While Mango is our most robust language learning resource, we also have materials to help you learn various languages on our shelves (books, audiobooks, and videos) and available through our digital library, Overdrive. American Sign Language lessons and information are available both in the library and on Overdrive. (I highly recommend everyone learn a little American Sign Language, but it’s especially great for babies! It’s fun and useful!)

Let us know what languages you want to explore and we’ll help you get started!