Comments on: BANNED?: Children’s Knitting at the Library!

By: Eileen

Eileen — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:06:40 +0000

I think it is terrible to have place that only fits the “brand” library – a library could perhaps replace the town halls and children and people could meet there doing lots of things.

here in the uk it would not be allowed because of health and safety regulations – which is even worst..

hope they change their mind..:)

By: Kris

Kris — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:27:53 +0000

Somebody put on an audio book, preferably a children’s classic, and give these little knitters a shared, literate experience.

By: CychoLibrarian

CychoLibrarian — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:01:37 +0000

This makes me think of something I’ve seen in our library as money and staff time become tighter. Difficult decisions have to be made about what programs we can continue to support. A good example is adult book groups. We used to have staff-led book groups in several different branches, where a staff person had to read a book on work time, prepare discussion topics, and then lead a usually small group of adults in a discussion about it. The amount of impact we were getting for all that time wasn’t much.

The problem is that when the decision was made to no longer have staff-led book groups, a lot of staff told the customers that we couldn’t or didn’t do book groups anymore. A better response would have been to reach out to the regulars in those groups to see if they wanted to take on the leadership of the group. At one location, two retired staff members took on the group leadership and the groups stayed strong. Another possibility would be to ask interested customers if they wanted to start a group, then help those people find each other.

We don’t have to “ban” these sorts of valuable library experiences. But we may have to find different ways to do them. And what better way than involving the customers even more?

By: Diane

Diane — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:50:57 +0000

What a great opportunity to highlight our knitting books and, perhaps encourage the club members’ parents to browse our collections. This, to me, would be a great way to build advocates for the library – and don’t all libraries need those – particularly in difficult economic times?

I read the link from “the yarn harlot” who doesn’t consider the library to be a community center – while my library has as one of its strategic goals “Library as Community Builder.” We would definitely welcome such a knitting group, just as we welcome the watercolorists who use our meeting room.

Too bad they live so far away from Virginia!

By: thorn

thorn — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:02:04 +0000

i am wholeheartedly with *the yarn harlot* on this one. she’s a committed knitter who lives in ontario; and she makes a levelheaded point.

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/archives/2008/08/18/discuss_i_give_you_a_topic.html

By: The Liminal Librarian » Blog Archive » Today’s theme: “A” is for Arrogance

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:50:25 +0000

[...] on to Arrogant (or Aback) example number two, today both Tame the Web and Librarian’s Rant pointed to this charming little story about a children’s knitting [...]