Monroe County libraries have so much to offer for everyone

Nancy Klingener, Outreach and Marketing Director for Monroe County Libraries, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about the libraries.

One little known aspect of the libraries is the Florida Keys History Center.

Klingener said, “Almost from the beginning of the Monroe County Public Library system, back in the early 60s, there has been a local history room, initially under a woman named Betty Bruce focused a lot on genealogy. Then many people remember Tom Hambright, who was our historian, beloved historian for many years, and he really expanded it. One of the very cool things he did was he scanned and posted a lot of our historic photos online, and now Dr. Corey Malcom is our lead historian, and we do a lot of really cool things in what is now called the Florida Keys History Center. If you go to Florida Keys history on our website, it’ll take you to the Florida Keys History Center page, and you’ll see a lot of what we do there, including the today in Keys history column. If you follow us on social media, on Facebook or Instagram or now Threads the Florida Keys History Center, you can follow it there, and you’ll see it every day. The other cool thing is, if you go down, you’ll see some of the resources, and those include the flicker page, which has all those images that I talked about and also has the Island Chronicles, which is a monthly newsletter that Dr. Malcom writes, which illuminates some episode in Keys history, which is generally new to me, and I think to a lot of people, it’s, it’s original research into things that have really never been written about or have been long forgotten in the history of the Keys. So that’s a very cool thing.”

These are all free resources.

Klingener said, “The ancestry and the Family Search work when you’re on the library WiFi. So you either need to come to the library with your own laptop, or you can borrow one of ours.”

Ground news also helps list events.

Klingener said, “Ground news is a software. It’s basically a website and what they do is they pull together tens of thousands of stories from thousands of sources, and they analyze them for sort of which point of view they’re coming from. They can show you what could be a blind spot if you generally only get your news from one perspective. You could be like, well, what are these other people seeing? It also means you’re not just seeing what gets served up to you by the social media algorithms, which can be a little frustrating. The easiest way to get at it is if you have the Libby app to get ebooks and the audio books from the library, it’s under Libby extras. So if you just scroll through the Libby app, you’ll see it there. We posted on the website frequently asked questions if you’re curious about how it works and what they do.”

There are a number of upcoming events, too.

Klingenger said, “If you hit the little locations button near the top right, it’ll take you right to the Key West library first, and you’ll see that on Friday for Dia de los Muertos. The last couple years we’ve done an event on that day, and also about the cemeteries of the Keys. This year we’ve got Josh Murano, who’s the marine archeologist for the South Florida National Parks, and he’s going to tell us about the submerged burial places they’ve recently been working on in the Tortugas, which is fascinating. We’re also going to have Rosa Maria Gonzalez from NAS Key West, who’s going to tell us about the cultural significance of the holiday. Then there will be a procession to the Key West cemetery where we’re going to hear about Mario Sanchez, one of Key West’s great artists. Then on Saturday, at the Key West library, we’ve got our first annual book fest, which we’re very excited about, 25 local authors are going to be there telling us about their books, having an open mic in the Palm Garden. The Friends of the Library will be doing a used book sale and Dr. Malcolm will be back, and he will be having meet the historian session at the Florida Keys History Center, and showing folks some of the amazing documents and manuscripts we have in the collection.”

For more information, click here:  https://keyslibraries.org/