Nancy Klingener, Community Affairs Manager for Monroe County Public Library, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about what’s been going on in the libraries.
A new kids catalog will help satisfy any bookworm.
Klingener said, “We don’t have a limit on the number of items you can check out. And sometimes that’s really handy for folks who have kids, and they just come in with these giant stacks of picture books and check them out and their kids are just voracious for those stories. So this is a way you don’t have to comb through the entire catalog. All these items are also in our bigger existing online catalog, but here it’s just for everything from board books up to grade school age. You can find what you want. You can request it, and you can send it either to your local branch library, or we have pickup lockers at Bernstein Park on Stock Island, at the Marathon Library and at the Key Largo Library. So if you can’t make it during library hours. Just ask for it. We’ll send them there. I would really recommend too, if you do have kids in school, there’s a kids and teens button on the homepage, and that will take you to our kids and teens section. There’s a Homework Help page with all kinds of different things that could help kids do the work they need to do.”
The Islamorada branch is looking for a refresh.
Klingener said, “We did this a couple years ago with our Big Pine Key branch, and anybody who knew that library before and after, people thought it was a whole new library, or that it had been expanded. So we want to do the same thing for Islamorada and really give that building the tender, loving care that it deserves. So it will be closing on September 15, is the current plan, and we expect it to be closed for about five weeks. We are asking folks from the Islamorada area, please go in now, check out all you want that will tide you over that period. We’ll give you an extended loan period. We don’t charge overdue fines anyway, because we’re going to have to take everything out of that building. So the fewer books that we have to move out of that building in boxes, the better. So please, please, please, come in between now and September 13 and check out all you like.”
Public libraries in Monroe County began in 1892.
Klingener said, “We have the minutes from Key West library meeting, association meeting from 1892. There are actually records of libraries in Key West going back even further, but that’s the one that we can document.”
Check out all the events on the website.
Klingener said, “There’s one cool thing about our calendar, too, which is when you click on an event, you can either set up an email reminder, add it to your calendar, like a Google Calendar or an Outlook calendar, or you can share it with a friend. So if you see something that looks cool and you’re like, oh, I don’t want to forget about this, just set up an email reminder, put it on your calendar. Here’s a little breaking news. Saturday story times are returning at Marathon, 10am on Saturdays, so they’ll have story time twice a week now.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keyslibraries.org/