Lincoln Highway: Nevada Public Library
Not that one; this is in Iowa!
This is a town that CELEBRATES the Lincoln Highway! The town has an annual celebration of the Lincoln Highway!!! VERY exciting!! Unsurprisingly, this library probably has more material about the Highway than any other I’ve visited. It’s not the only thing, but it is nice to find places interested in the same thing I’m interested in!
A nice fancy new building here! Look at how tidy everything looks, and I love that the door is in this sort of cut-out area. It all kind of pulls you toward the door!
Library puzzles! It took me a while to get this shot, because patrons kept working on the puzzles - wonderful! I like the repeated things I’m seeing in libraries; we’re all doing so many of the same good things. Puzzles are nice ways to make an easy connection back to our communities.
So, we’re all doing a lot of the same things. But everyone, in almost every single library, is doing something unique and different. And this is different! It’s new to me, and an interesting historical idea.
In each of these boxes are newspaper clippings, and photocopies of clippings, attached to big index cards of local obituaries! A long time ago, I briefly did some reading of the local newspaper for a local substation that broadcast to blind people so they could hear the paper. And the number one thing my trainer said you HAD to be sure to read was the obituaries. These are important to people! And they serve as an archive of important historical information for the community. So neat!
Want to join a book group? Just stop by, read the information on the book, and check out the book for your group! There are several different groups, so everyone can enjoy their own favorite genre. (I hear the After Dark group is awesome - and reading this good book! A Psalm for the Wild-Built: A Monk and Robot Book (Monk & Robot #1)
I know - you can’t even tell what this is from the photo. But shift your perspective a moment: we’re looking up at a drop ceiling lighting fixture. You know how they are always too bright? In the back room at this library, they have covered the brightness with these awesome see-through light covers! I absolutely loved this (and probably got a little overly excited) such a great idea for things to do to make your staff room, or the library, a happier place! (Happiness is always crucial for me; so keep thinking about ways to build it in your library!)
This is a small thing, but people can drop in donations of personal care items here to be taken by anyone who needs them. I love this! We were chatting about this while I was being toured around, and the library staffer was telling me that people collect the material in hotels to drop here. Such a great idea! As you know, I’m driving across the entire country (back and forth), and I’m in a lot of hotels. So I’m now grabbing the toiletries that I was just ignoring before, and I’ll drop them off in my library when I get home!
And here is ANOTHER totally unique thing, that I’ve never seen anywhere else! See those notebooks? Those are community books. They started this during the early days of Covid, when it was responsible to have some distance and not keep passing it around. People can come to the library, grab a notebook, and add their own entry. Then the next person who comes in can grab that and make another entry. And…it goes on. THIS IS SO COOL!!! I’m definitely taking this idea home, and using it in my library!
And finally: I love to see library t-shirts! You can order your NPL library merch right here! Are you selling merch in your library? I’ve been in several libraries selling things like this, and I don’t think it’s going to be your biggest moneymaker but it’s a pretty good thing!
Taking away some ideas here, maybe this is a week to try dong new things, something you haven’t considered or tried until now! Doing new things helps to keep us all mentally young and exciting - just as cool as we can be. Yay: all of us!