Worlds Connect @ Your Library® is this year’s National Library Week theme, and from April 12-18, 2009 the American Library Association encourages you to show your patrons the wonderful worlds available at your library.

 

Over the past few weeks, I, along with the other members of the Public Awareness Committee’s National Library Week subcommittee, have reviewed over thirty applications submitted for the Scholastic Library Publishing National Library Week grant. In late January, we will meet in Denver and select one lucky library to receive a $3,000 grant towards their National Library Week celebration. I am amazed by the variety of wonderful programs and services described in the applications: Multicultural programs that reach out to immigrants or celebrate the various ethnic groups in the community; Space – the Final Frontier; The Worlds of Art, Music and Literature; The Natural World Around Us. All are ideas expounded upon in the grant applications, showing that the worlds which connect at the library are as vast and varied as the world itself.

 

What are we looking for? Some of the key judging points are: community involvement and partnership; a realistic budget and timeline; appropriate use of the theme, the @ Your Library® logo, and of the grant funds (for promotional purposes only); and original programs that are creative and have potential for generating widespread public visibility.