By Nick Caum, the Director of the Creswell Library.
CRESWELL – Books are the backbone of our library but programs are the heart. Events like Storytime and Lego Club, Teen Game Night and book clubs for multiple age groups run year-round. They keep us busy and encourage new families to visit.
But when summer arrives, we host larger scale programs. Of course, we continue to host our regular programs too. What kind of monster would take away Storytime?
This past summer we were faced with a unique issue. Our longtime director would be away from the library and our youth librarian would be serving in his current role and as the acting director. Our summer programming needed help from somewhere outside the library.
Luckily, Special Districts Association of Oregon (SDAO) offered us an Internship Grant.
We were lucky enough to be awarded the grant and to find a candidate that was working toward their Master’s of Library and Information Science.
Lindsey Quigley-Johnson, who grew up in Creswell and needed experience in a public library setting for her degree at San Jose State University. It was a perfect match.
With Lindsey’s help our library had a robust and successful Summer Reading Program. Our library had a program attendance total of 2,841 for the 49 programs we hosted.
We had over 310 children sign up to participate in our reading program. In total, children turned in 6,326 reading hours over the summer of 2022.
Lindsey was at nearly all of these events, bringing her enthusiasm and knowledge while developing skills that will help her to grow as a librarian.
Our summer would never have run as smoothly or successfully as it did without Lindsey and the financial support we received from SDAO to bring her on board.
Now it’s time to start planning the next summer reading program. Hopefully, we won’t have any unexpected hiccups this year but you won’t find me holding my breath.
If you can’t wait until summer, then join us for one of our year-round events. Visit our website at creswell-library.org to learn more.
