By Miriam Meza –
Imagine what it would be like if that popular book or top-chart audio was available faster and easier at Aurora Public Library (APL). Imagine more Aurora residents having library cards and coming together to discuss the same book. Imagine having accessible answers to those parenting questions that keep you up at night, such as “At what age can my child start eating solid foods?”
At APL, we not only want to feed your imagination, but more your ideas into reality.
Through the Feed Your Imagination pillar of the 2017 – 2020 Strategic Plan, APL has implemented many of these creative plans. If you’d like to know more about the strategic plan, refer back to the February 7 article in The Voice (click here), or watch a video with our updates on our website at aurorapubliclibrary.org. The Feed Your Imagination Committee has improved access and availability of popular materials, including books, DVDs, audio, and e-sources. This includes increased usage of Hoopla (streaming video) and RBDigital (magazines and audio), implementing software to help us identify each location’s popular subjects and authors, and internally streamlining selection and handling of materials. More important was getting one step closer to our 70% goal of increasing the number of Aurora residents who are library cardholders; we’re now at 56%!
If this isn’t exciting enough, we launched Parent’s Corners throughout our locations, Santori downtown, Eola Road, and West Branch. What are Parent’s Corners, you ask? Parent’s Corners are a one-stop area of materials and resources on parenting, early childhood education, and helpful community organizations. The Parent’s Corner sub-committee developed this concept by providing a variety of high-demand parenting books to have available for parents to check out. In this collection are 12 Learning Kits for your little ones, ages from birth to grade 5. Kits include math and science, reading and writing, early literacy skills for birth to age two, and music. Next time you are at the APL, stop at the Children’s Department to check out a kit for up to two weeks.
We continue to work on improving these services and experiences for our community and we will launch our Aurora-wide initiative, Aurora: United We Read in Fall 2019! Becky Clark, co-chair of the Feed Your Imagination pillar, said, “This is a ‘One Book, One City’ reading initiative intended to connect to Aurora’s diverse readers. A sub-committee from across all of our locations began reviewing 25 to 40 titles that could connect to and intrigue our community to encourage them to read and discuss the book together.” Stay for the unveiling of the book in Summer 2019!
Miriam Meza is communications manager for Aurora Public Library.
