You might have noticed some big machines out in front of the library last week digging up a whole bunch of dirt. We had a few people come in to ask if we were having a sewer issue or something like that.

Far from it! In fact, we’ve had the folks at Staucet’s Landscaping out there for the past few days, making the area under our platform overhang ready to install a new patio!

The idea, which we’ve been kicking around for quite some time, is to mimic the original train station platform and to create a new covered outdoor seating area and programming space where we could have a story time or where you could get a cup of coffee and bring your laptop and do a bit of work using our 24/7 wi-fi.

You could even come inside and borrow one of our chess boards and have a nice game with a friend! We’re really excited about this new space, and we hope you will be too.

This project was made possible through a State and Municipal Aid grant from New York State, which we received with the invaluable assistance of town of Guilderland Supervisor Peter Barber and Don Csaposs of the Guilderland Industrial Development Agency, to whom we are very grateful.

Thanks also go to Assemblymember Pat Fahy for her assistance in shepherding the SAM grant through the State Legislature. I am also grateful to Jason Staucet of Staucet’s landscaping for his fantastic work, and to AFL Building Chair Paul Scilipoti for his.

We look forward to having an official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new patio in the spring but, in the meantime, once the finishing touches are in place, please feel free to enjoy the last few da

ys of pleasant weather for the year out on the patio!

Election Day

Bake Sale

Election Day is almost here, which means it’s time again for the annual AFL Bake Sale!

While you’re doing your patriotic duty, there is one sure fire way to leave the polling place with a smile on your face: Get yourself a brownie!

Whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat or an independent, we can all agree that homemade cookies, pies and bread make the world a little sweeter, so please visit the Library’s Election Day Bake Sale at Altamont Village Hall while you’re voting on Nov. 8. All proceeds from the sale go to support the Altamont Free Library.
 

Better yet, you can also donate baked goods to the sale! We need plenty of bakers to make this fundraiser a success, so if you’d like to donate some baked goods or would like to help out running the table, give me a call at 518-861-7239 or email me at . Thank you!

First Monday

Book Club

Do you love to read? Do you love talking about what you’ve read with other interesting and smart people? If so, please join us for the next meeting of the First Monday Book Club on Monday, Nov. 7, at noon.

If you would like to join us for our next meeting, please call us at 518-861-7239 or email me at and we’ll make sure that you get all the details. At that meeting, we’ll be discussing “10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works” by Dan Harris. There will be plenty to discuss, so call today to reserve your copy and join us!

Masks optional

As of Oct. 1, masking is optional but recommended for both patrons and staff at the Altamont Free Library. We will continue to provide disposable masks for all who would like to use them, and we ask that if you’re not feeling well that you put one on.

For the many of you who have told us that you feel more comfortable in a mask-requiring environment, please know that we will continue to do all we can to make sure that the library is as clean and sanitary a place as we can reasonably make it, and you are encouraged to wear a mask yourself if you prefer.

Many of the staff members will continue to wear masks. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns about this new policy, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at director@altamontfreelibrary.org.

It’s almost time for another wonderful outdoor nature story time with Thacher Park Nature Center educator Shannon Duerr. Please join us in Orsini Park on Wednesday, Oct,. 26, at 11 a.m. This month, in honor of the spooky season, we’ll be learning all about bats! (They’re not as scary as you might think!)

We’ll read a story all about bats, have some batty fun, and play some bat games! We’ll meet in the Orsini Park gazebo and be outdoors for about 45 minutes, so bundle up and meet us outside!

Election Day

Bake Sale

Speaking of the spooky season, it’s almost Election Day!

While you’re doing your patriotic duty, there is one sure fire way to leave the polling place with a smile on your face: Get yourself a brownie! Whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat or an independent, we can all agree that homemade cookies, pies and bread make the world a little sweeter, so please visit the Library’s Election Day Bake Sale at Altamont Village Hall while you’re voting on November 8th. All proceeds from the sale go to support the Altamont Free Library.

Better yet, you can also donate baked goods to the sale! We need plenty of bakers to make this fundraiser a success, so if you’d like to donate some baked goods or would like to help out running the table, give me a call at 518-861-7239 or email me at . Thank you!

Story time

at ARC

For the past several months, we’ve been doing our weekly Tuesday morning story times for children outside in Orsini Park, and it’s been a ton of fun! Now that the weather is getting colder, we’re moving story times a few blocks away and indoors!

Starting on Tuesday, Oct. 18, please join us in the community room at theAltamont Reformed Church at 129 Lincoln Ave. in Altamont on Tuesdays at 11 a.m. for a super fun morning of songs, stories, and activities! We’re moving to ARC so that our Storytime families have lots of room to stretch out and distance themselves from one another. Many thanks to Altamont Reformed Church for hosting us this fall and winter. We hope to see you there!

Last call

for input!

For the past several months, the Altamont Free Library Board of Trustees has been seeking feedback from our community about what we’re doing well, what we could be doing better and how we can serve our community better in the future.

We’ve done dedicated surveys for homeschooling families and local educators, focus groups with fifth-graders, senior citizens, and parents of young children, and left drop boxes for paper surveys in several locations around Knox and Berne, including Knox Town Hall, Dollar General in East Berne, Hilltown Healthcare in Berne, and the Berne Public Library.

Most of all, we’ve had an online survey going for the past few months, and we’ve had over one hundred responses to it so far. In short, we’ve been very busy, and we’ve collected loads of useful ideas that we’ll use to craft our 2023-25 Long Range Plan of Service. To everyone who’s shared your thoughts with us so far, thank you so much!

We’re beginning to wrap up the feedback collection of our process, but if you’d like to share your thoughts about Altamont Free Library, we’ll keep our online survey open for a few more weeks. You can find it at https://tinyurl.com/AFL-Survey or through a link on our Facebook page or our website.

It’ll only take about five minutes, and even if you don’t use our library, we’d still love to hear your feedback. (In fact, we’d especially love to hear your feedback if you don’t use the library!) We are so grateful for your time and your ideas! We can’t wait to share our new Long Range Plan with you when it’s ready early next year.

Masks optional

As of Oct. 1, masking is optional but recommended for both patrons and staff at Altamont Free Library. We will continue to provide disposable masks for all who would like to use them, and we ask that if you’re feeling that you put one on.

For the many of you who have told us that you feel more comfortable in a mask-requiring environment, please know that we will continue to do all we can to make sure that the library is as clean and sanitary a place as we can reasonably make it, and you are encouraged to wear a mask yourself if you prefer.

Many of the staff will continue to wear masks. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns about this new policy, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at director@altamontfreelibrary.org.

Since March 2020, the leadership team at the Altamont Free Library has been very conscientious about making sure that our community was able to use the library in as safe and healthy a way as possible. For a time, that meant that we had to be entirely closed to the public and only allow for digital lending through services like Libby and Hoopla, and doing video story times on our YouTube channel.

As the pandemic progressed and we learned more, we were able to be more accessible and open: First with grab-and-go service, then with browsing by appointment, and then with fully-open doors, as long as patrons and staff were all masked. At every stage of our pandemic response, we’ve done our best to balance safety with access, and for the most part I think that we’ve done a pretty good job.

No member of our staff, for instance, has ever gotten COVID even once, which is pretty remarkable, and it’s pretty hard to imagine that any of our patrons have picked it up here either. I’d count that as a success.

On the other hand, I absolutely recognize that our requirement that patrons continue to wear masks has annoyed and frustrated some folks. Most of the frustrated people have been polite about it and to all of those, I say a full-hearted thank you for your patience and understanding as we’ve done our best to navigate through a changing public-health environment.

But now the time has come to loosen that restriction. Beginning on Oct. 1, masking is optional for both patrons and staff at the Altamont Free Library.

We will continue to provide disposable masks for all who would like to use them, and we ask that if you’re feeling that you put one on. For the many of you who have told us that you feel more comfortable in a mask-requiring environment, please know that we will continue to do all we can to make sure that the library is as clean and sanitary a place as we can reasonably make it, and you are encouraged to wear a mask yourself if you prefer.

Many of the staff will continue to wear masks. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns about this new policy, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at director@altamontfreelibrary.org.

Thank you all for your support, patience, and understanding. We look forward to seeing your smiling faces again soon, if you’d like to show them to us. (Or keep that mask on if you prefer! We like you either way.)

“Branching Out” mural

You may have noticed something new outside the library. It’s pretty hard to miss! This past weekend at the Altamont Fall Fun Day, we unveiled a temporary traveling mural created in the summer of 2021 by a group of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) teen artists from Albany, Troy, and Schenectady.

The mural is called “Branching Out” and its creation was a collaborative program of Albany Public Library, Amplified Voices, Albany Center Gallery, and the Albany Barn. The teen artists worked with mentors and educators from Amplified Voices, whose mission is to elevate the work of BIPOC artists and to address racism in our society.

The artists were asked to consider what libraries meant to them, and their response was the incredible mural that you can see outside of the library though Oct. 8. Their mural challenges the viewer to “create your own world.”

The mural has been on view at several libraries around the Capital District, and we are very proud to be able to share it with the Altamont community. Please come take a look!

Campion exhibit

Speaking of temporary art exhibits, for the next month-and-a-half or so, we’ll be hosting a really cool display in our foyer display case. Diane Campion is a local artist who works in many media, and we’ll be showing a collection of paintings and drawings that she has done in her extensive travels around the world.

Her travel journals are an inspirational and vibrant expression of the magic of seeing new places. Come check it out! Thank you, Diane, for letting us display a small bit of your incredible work!

This past weekend, we finally completed a project that we’ve been working towards for a very long time: We’ve replaced all of the fluorescent lights in the library with energy efficient LEDs!

This change is calculated to save the library nearly 7,000 kilowatt hours of energy per year, and will save the library more than $750 per year in utility costs, which for us is a lot!

Even better, we won’t have to get the tallest guy we know to get up on the tallest ladder in the village anymore to replace the lightbulbs in our ceiling anymore, since these new light-emitting diodes are likely to last us for years and years!

We are very grateful to the town of Guilderland for its assistance in helping us secure the grant that paid for this project, which will make our library more environmentally and financially sustainable for years to come!

Fall Fun Day

Have you marked Saturday, Sept. 24, on your calendars yet? It’s Altamont Fall Fun Day!

Sponsored by Altamont Community Tradition, Fall Fun Day will have something for every member of your family, from games and bouncy houses for kids, to Altamont history walking tours, to music, crafts, and much more!

Come by at 11:30 a.m. for the unveiling of a temporary traveling mural.

Then come visit us in the park to record an oral history story for posterity. It could be a story about the train station, or about the library, or fall in Altamont, or anything else that you might like to record a story about for inclusion in our growing oral history collection!

It’s all happening in and around Orsini Park from noon to 4 p.m., so please join us!

Campion Exhibit

Speaking of temporary art exhibits, for the next month and a half or so, we’ll be hosting a really cool display in our foyer display case. Diane Campion is a local artist who works in many mediums, and we’ll be showing a collection of paintings and drawings that she has done in her extensive travels around the world.

Her travels journals are an inspirational and vibrant expression of the magic of seeing new places. Come check it out! Thank you, Diane, for letting us display a small bit of your incredible work!

Get Outside

Story Time

Please join us on Wednesday, Sept. 28, at 11:30 a.m. for another wonderful outdoor nature story time with Thacher Park Nature Center educator Shannon Duerr. This time, we’ll be learning about trees and leaves and why they turn such beautiful colors in the fall!

We’ll read a story all about trees, have some leafy fun, and play some tree games! We’ll meet in the Orsini Park gazebo and be outdoors for about 45-minutes. In case of muddiness, you might want to wear your galoshes.