Libraries Transform

April 3rd, 2016
Galina · Staff Recommendations

Libraries Transform

The theme of this year’s National Library Week is Libraries Transform.

Libraries have always been about finding, storing, and making information available to everyone. In the last decade or so, we’ve been discovering just how awesome and far-reaching a library’s abilities to build communities can be—and we’ve been stepping up to meet our understanding of what a library can do.

The Harrison Public Library has been on the forefront of transforming itself as a library. From our building and systems renovations, to adapting to changing technology, to building community relationships by bringing new people into the library, to finding new ways to bring the library out into the community, we are always stretching, building, and growing.

But the real question is…how can the library help you transform?

At the top of our webpage is the Explore button, where you can find materials to check out or download, museum passes, digital history collections at Harrison Remembers, educational materials including driving tests, foreign languages, GED courses, and more.

Looking for a more specific recommendation? Try some of these:

Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, by Ken Robinson. Sir Ken Robinson is an educator from Liverpool, England, who overcame childhood polio to become a world-renowned educator and public speaker. One of his talks on education has become one of the most popular videos from the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference and can be seen here. This book focuses on finding the place where your passions and talents overlap.

The Theory of Everything, directed by James Marsh, starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. The story of Stephen Hawking’s life, based on the book Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Wilde Hawking, his first wife. Stephen Hawking is famous for his work on black holes and cosmology in physics, especially in the book A Brief History of Time. He was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, at the age of twenty-one and given two years to live; he’s now seventy-four years old.

Lynda.com, a learning website with free access via HPL. It has thousands of online instruction videos on professional topics, from setting up a small business to using Photoshop and AutoCAD to designing iPhone apps. Here is how you can set up an account via the library.

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, by Brené Brown, PhD. The author is a professional sociologist who quantitatively studies both negative and positive emotions; this is a book about forgiving and loving yourself. The author is also another renowned speaker at the TED conference; you can see her most famous talk, on vulnerability, here.

The Harrison Public Library’s Library Week Celebration, on Saturday, April 16^th. Events will be held at the Richard E. Halperin Memorial Library Building and will include:

• Cloud Storage workshop from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.. Our library patrons will learn how to backup, access, and share files and pictures from any Internet connected device. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device, or use the Library’s Window laptops).
• Family Storytime & Craft: Libraries – Stories and rhymes for the whole family in the Community Room, followed by a craft in the Children’s Discovery Center, from 10:30-11:00 a.m.
• A viewing of the TED talk, “Technology, Communication, Communities,” from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.
• MagicBox Digital Media Showcase. Our library patrons will exhibit Created at MagicBox workshops, including a framed photo exhibit, Garageband demos, special effects videos, and photobooks, from 2 to 3 p.m.
• Makers at the Library: Lo-Tech. A collection of works created by you, our patrons, at the library’s programs, including watercolor fans, drawings, knitted scarves, mandalas, origami and watercolor artworks, from 2 to 3 p.m.
• Makers at the Library: Hi-Tech. A 3D printer demo, from 3 to 3:30 p.m, and demos of SCRATCH (an interactive design tool for kids), littleBits (an electronic engineering design/block toolkit for kids), Snap Circuits (a circuit design toolkit for kids), and Dash and Dot robot kits, from 3:30 to 4 p.m.

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz. A book looking at all the ways that we can be wrong—and how to appreciate and work around them. She has a fun TED talk about regret and tattoos, both hers and Johnny Depp’s that you can watch here.

The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life, by Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss treats himself as a human guinea pig, learning how to master all kinds of skills, from learning languages quickly, to becoming a national Chinese kickboxing champion. This book focuses on the skills of how to cook—but covers how to learn any skill. You can find his blog here.

Lifehack.org. A website collection of tips on how to change and improve any aspect of your life—from “6 Ways to Help Someone Recover after Rehab” to gaining perspective on depression.

Essential Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change, Briefly, by Leo Babauta. A short book on how to use ideas from Zen to help change any habit or mindset. The author has a long-running website here.

And, of course, the best resource of all: stop by the information desk and ask a librarian to help you find what you’re specifically looking for, from inspiring music to novels that will lift your spirits on the darkest days, to answers for any kind of question at all.

Our goal in transforming is always to serve our patrons better – so let us know what you need to help you transform.