By Nancy Maron Vice President, Board of Trustees, Yonkers Public Library
This week, the column comes to you direct from Denver, Colorado, where I am attending the annual meeting of the American Library Association (ALA). This is a monster of a conference, with thousands of attendees including hundreds of publishers and vendors of all-things-library… and lots and lots and lots of librarians. There are librarians from major research universities, librarians from community colleges, librarians from law firms and other businesses. There are children’s, young adult, and reference librarians. And there are public librarians and public library Trustees!
I’m at the meeting this week as part of my “day” job, which is helping librarians at colleges and universities and publishers of all kinds with developing business strategies. But I am also here representing the Yonkers Public Library. A month ago, Christian Zabriskie, the manager of the Will Library branch, applied for a grant from an organization called the Awesome Foundation. We learned shortly after that the proposal was one of just a handful selected for the final, live “pitch” at the national meeting.
You might have heard of Christian – his team at Will recently launched the Local History Incubator, a program that will let us capture the stories of Yonkers residents, preserve their written, visual and oral histories. This is a terrific step forward, building on earlier work led by Deputy Director Susan Thaler at the Riverfront branch.
Back to Denver… The YPL proposal read something like this…
Stories have impact for the individual telling them, the people who are hearing them, and the community they are all a part of. With the popularity of StoryCorps and The Moth Radio Hour, people are becoming increasingly aware of the power inherent in storytelling. We want to extend that to the youngest members of our community…
At YPL we believe that kids have agency and power. We want to hear what they have to say and we want to know what they are seeing in the community around them. Children are incredibly observant, make extraordinary connections, and are often really really funny… We will be working in partnership with students and faculty from Sarah Lawrence College on this grant as well as the local schools for community buy-in across our city.
We would use the [grant] to fund a full day festival of storytelling for kids with performances, workshops, training on our recording equipment and plenty of food to keep our young storytellers going.
Well, I landed in Denver just in time to run to the convention center, sprint to the conference room, and watch as the YPL proposal won and Christian was handed a giant check. Stay tuned for an announcement about when the festival will be! Serving our youngest patrons is a key part of our strategic plan, as is innovating with new technologies. Plus, it’s going to be really, really fun.
Happy 125th, YPL!
Last week – February 9, to be precise – marked the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Yonkers Public Library. While we celebrated with birthday parties in all three branches, the festivities have just begun. Keep an eye out for announcements about other major events planned for this year.
Update on Board of Trustees
I am proud to announce that for our latest call for applications, we received over a dozen excellent applications for the two available board seats. It is great to see so many enthusiastic people with such excellent credentials apply for these positions. If you applied and are not selected but still would like to volunteer in some other way, please be in touch! We have many other ways you can participate.
Part of my role as Board President has been to champion the long-range health and strategy of the library. In the last few years, I’ve been thrilled to participate in a time of major leaps forward: choosing our current Library Director through a national search, obtaining funding for the major renovation now underway at Will, developing a city-wide consultation to help us in crafting our current long-range plan, hosting our first major Gala to kick off the grand opening of Tech Central, and helping to build capacity in our very own board, including by making sure all our trustees can share their talents to the fullest. I am honored to be surrounded by the smart and energetic trustees on the board. So while I will still be writing in this space, this year our board will be ably led by the dynamic Anietra Guzmán-Santana, and I could not be happier.
See you at the library!
