Our library has been the recipient of a $10,000 grant from Libraries Transforming Communities Accessible Rural and Small Libraries in conjunction with The American Library Association and the Association of Small and Rural Libraries. With this grant we will be able to make some substantial changes in our children’s department. For many years libraries have been static and intimidating to children, especially children with learning disabilities. We will be spending the summer knocking down barriers that keep kids from reading for pleasure, particularly those kids who find reading difficult.
We will be holding a community conversation at 6 pm on Thursday June 8th to discuss how our county library can increase access for children with learning disabilities. Whether you have children or not, your input is appreciated, but we would really like to hear from the children themselves, so that we can receive input directly from the young residents of McCone County and our surrounding service area.
We have already begun some changes that were going to occur before we were notified about our grant award. You can see some of the changes in the slideshow below. Our goal is for our library to be “kid friendly and librarian unfriendly” with books organized by genre and topic with plenty of covers displayed and series organized together for easy decision making, instead of neatly organized rows of spines. We even have a new graphic novel section that is proving to be very popular. Please visit us this summer. Bring you kids, grandkids, nieces, and nephews. Join us on Thursday June 8th as we discuss ways that our local library can help increase access to reading materials.
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