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Lincoln Library

Stepping into 2021

Written by Doris

2021 and shoesMany are stepping into 2021 with a mixture of hope and apprehension as 2020 goes down in our memories as a year full of inconsistencies, unrest, anxiety, loneliness, and a pandemic. Most eyes show the effects when the topic of the past year comes up in conversation and most mouths have stories of how 2020 has adversely affected them. My hopes and prayers are that we will never look back on 2020 fondly!

We at Lincoln Library have all had our own personal struggles this past year. The library itself has also had some setbacks and did a bit of stumbling around in the dark as we tried to find a balance in between keeping the door open, but yet keeping our patrons safe. We have had to make lots of changes and, unfortunately, most of them have shortchanged our younger patrons. We have cut computer privileges, games, and other activities that involves larger groups of children gathering due to the difficulty of sanitizing and maintaining social distancing amongst that age group.

We are open our normal hours and you do not have to have an appointment to come in. We send faxes; the cost is 50 cents per page to send a fax and 10 cents a page to receive a fax. We make copies; we charge 10 cents for black and white and no more than 75 cents for a copy in color. We do have computers available for public use for adults only. Children may use the computers if they are doing school work.

We have books, lots of books! If we don’t have what you are wanting to read, we can usually get it for you through Interlibrary Loan. We have a good selection of movies; we can also order movies through Interlibrary Loan. You are more than welcome to come in and read the newspapers and magazines in the reading room. You can also check out the magazines to take home to read.

We also accept donations of magazines, movies, books, after-school snacks, and prizes for bingo. We will be having a book sale this spring as a fundraiser for our expansion project! It will be an excellent way for individuals to build their own personal library!

We want Lincoln Library to be a place to go to get away from it all! It is clean, warm, and you will be welcomed!

Programs, Services

Investing in Kids’ Lives

Written by Doris

basket of treatsOh my, here we are going into the last month of 2020! Although I don’t think that many will be bidding a fond adieu to the year, I do believe we will all be welcoming 2021 with a bit of trepidation.

The kids used to swarm into the library hoping to find an empty chair at one of the computers. COVID-19 brought that to a screeching halt many months ago. Consequently, the number of children coming through our door dropped considerably. Reading kids walk in knowing pretty much what they want and off they go. Lately, we have seen the number of children coming in, just to hang out, rising as the library is somewhere warm to go.

So as much as I like seeing them walk in the door, it does present sort of a conundrum. If our young patrons are at the library and they are not interested in reading, then there had better be an alternative. We have incorporated encouraging our young patrons to finish color sheets, connect-the-dots sheets, and word searches before receiving a snack when they are heading out the door! Trying to plan within the borders created by COVID-19, space, and time restrictions are the components that makes up this conundrum.

We have decided that we will play bingo for 60 to 90 minutes at the end of the day. Using grant money, we recently purchased a Bingo game, disposable sheets, and a good supply of daubers. It may not be a perfect solution, but it is probably going to come as close as anything else! It is an activity that all ages like to do, each participant will receive a snack when leaving the library for the evening, and we will work out a point system where the winners can vie for prizes.

I said all of that to say this, we would be so very thankful if anyone would like to donate snacks or prizes, or even take a turn or two of calling Bingo. Investing in the lives of these kids is worth every dime and every minute. They can be messy, wild, and teeth-clenching annoying; and then there are those other times that makes everything okay and extremely worth it all.

Word of the Week: The word of the week is “petrichor.” It is a noun and is pronounced /ˈpe trīkôr/. The word means a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather. The musty, barky smell of fresh rain fallen on the dry earth is petrichor.

Kids, Programs