Reference Department!
Welcome back to Behind the Stacks! We would like to first and foremost thank our amazing community for the outpouring of love and support for the WHEAT Food Drive the library hosted last week. In addition to the impressive quantity of food donations we received, donors expressed such fondness and empathy for our community and any Westies who may be struggling with food insecurity during these uncertain times. You all warmed many of our hearts last week, and we very much appreciate our town’s commitment to caring for others.
In the spirit of giving and community, the library is hoping to host a blood drive with the American Red Cross. Before we can fully schedule the event, we need to find out if enough people are interested in donating blood. If this is something you might be interested in, please call, email, or stop by the library to leave contact information and if we get enough participants to host a drive, we will reach out with a date and time for the event.
West Haven Library has also partnered with Community Connections–a division of the West Haven Community House whose goal is to increase independence, enhance integration, and improve the quality of life for people with intellectual disabilities. The library provides weekly activities for small groups from the day program to attend. Each month, the group votes on which biography to read, participates in a music and movement session based on their interests or music associated with the person we read about, and does a craft.
The goal is to build connections between the program participants and library staff, help them get comfortable coming to the library, and provide an educational and fun activity that gets them out into the community.
New to our Ora Mason branch this month is our Monday Night Tech Help. Could you or someone you know use some one-on-one support for computers, devices, email, social media or more? Book a free session with Rebeca, our branch manager, to go over your tech needs and get some guidance. Spots fill up fast, so book as early in advance as you can.
Do you have a teen looking for something to do? Have them join us for an evening of board games, snacks and fun! We’ll have all the classic board games available, plus a few you may have never heard of. Bring your friends and challenge them to your favorite games, try something brand new with friends you haven’t met yet, or gang up on the librarian for a round of UNO or Apples to Apples!
West Haven Library would like to congratulate one of our part-time library assistants, Shane Maher, on his promotion to Reference Associate! Shane has been with the library for almost three years now, and we are thrilled to have him join our Reference team full time!
There will be some changes to library hours around the Thanksgiving holiday. On Wednesday, Nov. 26–the day before Thanksgiving–the library will close early at 4 p.m. The library will be closed on Thanksgiving Day and the day after, Friday, Nov. 28. We will reopen Saturday, Nov. 29 at our regular hours. We hope everyone has a happy, healthy, and safe holiday weekend!
Lastly, we want to thank you Westies for all the amazing feedback we received on our previous article where we interviewed long-time library worker Dani! Patrons have expressed how much they enjoyed reading more about our staff and some even asked for autographs! We look forward to introducing you to more of our staff members in future articles so you can get to know us outside of the library!