Donna Street pinch-hits again this week for regular library columnist Linda Wilson, who has been on vacation.
There aren’t many special activities at the library this week, but there will be plenty going on for the rest of the month of August. School starts this week and Ready to Read will start up for the year next Thursday, August 15, at 10:30 a.m. If you have a child who is not in school and you are able to invest in their future for a couple of hours each week, then bring your little Einstein. He or she will be engaged in early learning activities and stories that you and your child will find interesting. If mom and dad are working, then caregivers please consider making Ready to Read part of your Thursday activity.
Last week in our local library board meeting we looked at the statistics for the library so far this year. We seem to have increased in patrons in the adult and teen areas. That is great! We also saw that there were just as many children using the library as the previous year, but that fewer books were checked out by our smallest library patrons. There could be many reasons for that, but we want to encourage parents and caregivers to check out one extra book each week. It will be good for our children, but it will also improve the stats at the library. The saying “Readers are Leaders” is not just a cliché; it is well documented in all educational circles.
Put the next couple of dates on your calendar for August. On August 22, there will be a follow-up to the movie from the summer on the environment. This movie is entitled “Wasted” and deals with a big environmental issue, which is the amount of wasted food that happens in our country. More information will be shared later in the month.
Preparations are being made for a local job fair at the library on August 27. There will be some training classes to help folks sharpen their job interview skills before the actual job fair. Call the library if you are in need of a job, either locally or regionally, to find out the specific opportunities being offered. More information on that next week on that as well.
Donna Street is Dade's preeminent local historian, the Dade County Public Library's longtime warrior princess and a fierce crusader for the correct pronunciation of the acronym SPLOST. You may email her at donnam.street@gmail.com.
