Partnerships

[Alapsley]

The Public and Cultural Programs Advisory Committee is working on creating toolkits for librarians doing all types of programs.  Once completed the toolkits will be posted on the Programming Librarian.  We need your input.  Many of us typically partner with our local Public or Academic Library, our senior centers, our day care centers.  To get us thinking about different partners, would you willing to share 5 partnerships that you consider creative.  For example, for our One Book One Community program I partnered with our local YMCA.  They purchased copies of the books and put them on the handlebars of each treadmill so people could read as they used the equipment.  They put a bookmark in each book so you could write down what page you were on when you finished your workout and could come back to the next day.  Many thanks.  You can respond to this or send something directly to me at andrea.lapsley@colostate.edu

[melissad]

Here are several creative programs we have done, are doing, or plan to do in the near future...

“Bank on books! Cool Cash for a Hot Summer” was our summer reading program in 2006.
We partnered with a local bank to give away cash, savings accounts and savings bonds.

WNIN our local PBS affiliate partnered with the library to promote a new online game called “Retrieving with Evie” a local dog who picks up litter. This also involved a partnership with our Operation City Beautiful group. The library has 2 computers dedicated to PBS kids and PBS kids go. After 1 year, we can do what we want with the computers and workstation.

Geography Educators Network of Indiana(GENI) has partnered with us to bring the National Geographic Society’s Giant traveling maps to the library. These are huge floor maps that you can walk on and interact with. We had a staff member (from Kenya) give tours of the Africa map. We are working on the second year of this partnership to bring in the Asia map.

The library is one of the partners involved in Vanderburgh Homeless Connect. This is a 1 day, 1 stop shop of coordinated services people who are homeless or near-homeless. The library has provided the laptop computer lab, staffing and tech support for this program. We promote library cards and other library services to those who attend.

We have a partnership with our local Hospice group through the Vista Care Foundation. The Lottes lecture series supports an annual program where we bring in a speaker dealing with end of life issues. Last year, we brought in Jane Brody.

WorkOne and Vincennes University are two of our newest partnerships. We are working with WorkOne and VU to provide space for GED, ESL and ABE classes as well as afterhours access to WorkOne services. The local school corporations are getting out of the adult education business and Vincennes University is one of the new providers. A newly created consortium for our region has written a grant to get funding through the regional WorkOne office. We are just getting the first GED class off the ground at one of our inner city branches.

We are working with the Indiana High School Mock Trial Association to re-start the local Mock Trial program in Southern Indiana.
This idea is just getting started, but it matches with a new high school program focusing on law and social justice that will be offered by our school corporation starting this fall.

Another partnership we are working on is with our local zoo. Mesker Park Zoo and Botanical Gardens want to provide experts to speak on various animal and conservation topics. We would be the hosting agency for this speaker series.

We received grant money from a music trust to have music programs for kids. We used it to purchase recorders and had a staff member teach recorder classes. If we did not have a staff member who was able to do this, we could have partnered with the philharmonic, a music department at our local university or even a music store to get an instructor.

We did partner with a local university to offer German language classes for kids. It was actually the idea of some German students. We had a bad experience previously with a Spanish instructor who promised a lot, but didn’t deliver, so we laid some groundwork before we let the German student come to teach classes. We asked them to observe some of our current programs and talk with a staff member who had a successful Spanish class for kids. It worked out very well and we hope to do it again.

[CynthiaH]

We have done a number of unusual partnerships at our library. Here are a few:

For our general ongoing sponsors of our community reading program, Amarillo Reads, we got Hastings, a national chain of book and music stores, and our local newspaper. Hastings supplies books for author book signings, provides coffee and staff to run the book signings, and supplies plenty of copies of the books at all their locations in town. They also use their clout with publishers to help us get authors for next to nothing! The newspaper gives us free advertising space, so people will know what programs we're doing and what the book is.

We do Amarillo Reads four times per year, and the Fall one is by partnering with the Amarillo College Common Reader program. They choose the book, pay for the author visit, and ride herd on the author, and we do displays and events at our locations, provide the setting for the open-to-the-public author event, and help host a VIP reception prior to the event, and the booksigning after the event.

Other partnerships we've done: Getting the local opera company to do an opera based on the book we'd selected (Cold Sassy Tree), getting the local herb society to do an Herb Growing and Cooking event in association with a book selection, having a local bakery donate cupcakes and decorations (and instruction) for a cupcake decorating event. We've also used lecturers from local universties, the local chess club, railroad artifact society, storytelling groups, and local theatre groups. We've even used the local Native American Drum Group and tribal elders for events. And then there's the poetry slam groups for our poetry readings...