Libraries have offered a range of events and activities and resources to their patrons in an attempt to entertain, inform, and gather patrons together.
You can see some of the events I completed at a small public library in Pennsylvania here.
I regularly join forces with local groups in order to bring the very best programming for my patrons. I joined with a local Naturalist and the local Master Gardeners to liven my programming for my patrons.
I've joined with the local bookstore, coffee shop, business leaders, teachers and so forth to enhance my program.
Collection Development I combine with the local teachers to ensure that our collection meets the needs of the local school district. If students are regularly involved in reading Anne Frank, then I would be sure that we had resources related. If they were completing an interdisciplinary instruction unit on Medieval times, then I want to have resources for that too.
The same goes for the local community college or state or private university. Maybe we offer a special story time that is lead by education majors from the local college, where they earn experience, and maybe class credit for participating.
Database of Ideas Public performance can be draining. But our Adult, Children, and Young Adult librarians do it daily or weekly and keep going. I can help.
Why not create a databases of sessions, complete with craft ideas, stories to be read (linked to our catalog), creative snacks to be given, and links to online resources to be used? We work with our IT people and whatever software we choose and create an interactive, searchable database of ideas. What software? Possibly Koha, which is Open Source and can be altered to meet the needs of users. We combine with other librarians around the area and build our database better than ever. We attach a questionnaire to our database entries asking about numbers and experiences (ratings for future use).
We could see how often we read Dr. Seuss to a group of students, and be sure to maintain enough variety so that they don't get bored. With several sessions for any holiday or topic, students moving through our programs would be less likely to see the same sort of session twice.
Information Literacy I would collaborate with the faculty at the local college to provide an information literacy session to increase community understanding of the authority, relevancy, and currency of a piece. We could complete a prior knowledge survey and then teach what the patrons didn't know. At the end, we could assess what was learned and see how effective we were. We could provide this for a variety of ages and technology levels.
More Information
Want more ideas? If you're interested in Public Libraries, you may also like Educational Materials or Library Instruction or Educational Displays where I link to handouts and guides I have created, and discuss my seven requirements for great library instruction.
Librarians may also enjoy my thoughts on a basic Strategic Plan for an academic library. I give ideas for what steps to take in order to bring more patrons to the library with different types of programming and welcoming faculty and staff into the library community by including them in library tasks such as Collection Development, educational programming, and related endeavors.
Organization Matters are important. You can view some of my methods for addressing staff schedules, daily library issues and so forth here. Organization Matters are important. You can view some of my methods for addressing staff schedules, daily library issues and so forth here. And check out my Academic Library page below. Ideas from it can be applied to the Public Library in many cases.