Altamont Library Notes for Thursday, March 7, 2019
This past Wednesday, library lovers from all over New York State gathered at the capitol in Albany for the New York Library Association’s annual Library Advocacy Day. Librarians have a reputation for being a quiet bunch, but you would not believe how loud we can get when it comes to letting our elected representatives hear from us!
Hundreds of library professionals and patrons from Buffalo to Montauk traveled to Albany to make sure that every community in our big, diverse state has a well-funded, safe, accessible library with materials and technology for library users of every age and interest.
We are lucky in the Capital District to have elected representatives who get it. We’d like to make a special shout out to our favorites:
— Senator George Amedore, who has been able to secure tens of thousands of dollars for Altamont Free Library over his time in office, which has allowed us to upgrade our facilities and computers and to build the Spohr Family Patio that we opened in 2017; and
— Assemblymember Pat Fahy, who has been a fierce advocate for us and a constant presence at our library, most recently when she completed a one-day tour of all of the many libraries in her district as part of the Upper Hudson Library System Library Expedition.
Thanks to both of them for taking time out of your busy schedules for us.
If you are a library lover and have a few minutes to spare, please consider calling or writing to your New York State Assemblymember and Senator to let them know what your library means to you. We only have a few weeks to be heard while the state budget is being prepared to make sure that libraries aren’t left behind.
After all, even though we only gather at the capitol once a year, every day is Library Advocacy Day!
Pi(e) Day
One of the most delicious days of the year is coming up, and we need your help to celebrate. Thursday, March 14 is Pi Day (Get it? 3.14!) and we’ll be celebrating all of our favorite pies with a pie taste test!
If you’d like to enter a pie to the taste test, please give us a call at 518-861-7239. You can make any kind of pie you like! We’re not fussy. There will be a prize for the pie maker who gets the most votes.
If you’re not a pie maker yourself, you’ve got a role to play too: We’ll need lots of pie-tasters to eat and vote!
Trivia Night!
On Friday, March 15 at 7 p.m., make a team, study up, and BYOB to our mind-twisting trivia contest! Entrance is $5 and the winners take half the door. Contestants must be 21 and up, please.
Mystery Book Club
Please join us for a meeting of our newest book club, which is focused exclusively on mysteries! We’ve got members interested in every subgenre from intense psychological thrillers to low-key cozy mysteries and every type of mystery in between.
If you love a good whodunit, please join us on on Thursday, March 21 at 7 p.m. for a discussion of the “The Beautiful Mystery” by Louise Penny. I know we have a ton of Louise Penny fans here, so this would be a great time to join the club!
Story Time
One of the best ways of getting our youngest friends to become strong readers is by exposing them to a wide variety of readers and reading environments? For that reason, and also just because it’s just fun, we have two Story Times each week on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at 10:30 a.m.
Tuesday Story Times with Miss Ann are targeted at preschoolers, while our Wednesday StoryTimes with Miss Erika are for toddlers (but we don’t mind older or younger friends on either day). Please join us for mornings of stories, songs, and bubbles.