Like everyone else, library staff are currently pushing back some in-person programming plans and making adjustments in order to meet the moment and help “bend the curve” of the pandemic. We’re really looking forward to storytimes, meetings, and other community programming inside soon, but in the meantime, we are pushing forward with virtual programs as well as items you can take with you outside. This month, we want to let you know about engaging opportunities on the way for 2022.
If you read this column last month, you already know about the Teen Film Festival, and we encourage more teens to contribute a film this year. Film submissions are accepted through Feb. 1, so there is still time to make a movie and send it to filmfreeway.com/SCLTeenFilmFestival. Rules and more information may also be found on that website. Stay tuned to find out more about the upcoming festival itself, which will be a virtual live event, featuring the fantastic filmmaking of our local teens.
We continue to see very high use of our online resources — throughout the pandemic, electronic books, magazines, audio and movies have been a hit with many throughout our county. One of the popular items available through our Hoopla service is the library of Great Courses videos, which are now easier to access.
You told us that watching a Great Course uses up a lot of “checkouts” with Hoopla, and it was easy to run through them quickly, so we are excited to announce a Great Courses BingePass, for access to the most popular courses with only one checkout. Using a BingePass gives you seven days of unlimited access to all videos in the Great Courses collection, allowing you to finish a course without interruption. We hope you enjoy this new option, free with a Sonoma County Library card.
Throughout the last year, at the Healdsburg Library, we have tried to provide opportunities to reconnect with our community through nature and reading. Everyone (including us) needed ways to break out of screen time and get outside. Our bird watching activities, our Where the Wild Things Are geocaching game, and storytimes in the park (which will be back soon) provided hours of entertainment and learning in 2021, and we hope to continue these opportunities. This concept bears itself out in our new Reimagining Plan, which calls for libraries to—among other things—provide opportunities to learn, contribute, interact, and participate in a variety of places, engaging our community through partnerships, while working for resiliency and climate action.
To that end, we are rolling out a new ongoing program across Sonoma County called Seeds & Reads. The program is focused on the same concepts of learning, reading, and getting outside, and our first offering is a Take & Make Craft Kit for January 2022: seed bombs. This fun activity for families will provide seeds for native flowers, potting soil, and clay for molding into seed bombs, which are then dried and thrown at an appropriate patch of dirt. Once the seeds are planted, you will be able to watch as the seeds grow into wildflowers popular with many local pollinators: butterflies, hummingbirds, caterpillars, bees, moths, and bats. Your kit will include a guide with tips for great books about wildflowers and resources for learning more about pollinators and the roles they play in the world around us. Supplies are limited, so we hope to see you soon and look forward to more projects over the next year.
Jon Haupt is the branch manager of the Healdsburg Regional Library.
