Small, but mighty: Youth programming at the Winooski Library
Photo courtesy of Winooski Memorial Library.
The first thing you’ll notice when you walk through the doors of the Winooski Memorial Library is the energy. Children of varying ages are splayed around the room. Some children sit at a table to study, some work together at the two computers near the entrance, while others help clean up crafts from this weekend’s program.
Kirsten Wilson, 30, the Youth Services Coordinator at the library, puts together programming for the children in the community. On an average week, the library has five youth programs and sees 50 participants.
“We’re a small municipal library in a very diverse community, so I think of us as being small, but mighty,” Wilson said.
On a recent afternoon, Wilson organized the play area after the day’s activities and filled a request for a hug from one of the children before sitting down for an interview.
What kind of programs do you put together? What’s that process like?
Every week we do something different to engage kids in an educational setting, but make it fun. So last week we made cardboard pulleys. Today we did coding robots. Today we have ‘STEAM’ which is Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math—it’s activity hour. Sometimes we do art projects. In a few weeks we're going to do costume-making.
Occasionally there are some unique grants that we’re able to apply to use to support programming. We did apply for a specific grant for Arabic educational programs here at the library. So that supported new programs coming in—an Arabic-English storytime as well as adult Arabic language class.
Why did you get into this work?
Community is just what makes me click and I just love being with other people. I am book-oriented, but I feel like libraries are so much more than that.
What else are they?
What makes a library more than just a depository of books is the space and people in between our shelves. Anyone can walk into the Winooski Memorial Library and meet and socialize with other community members, forming connections that extend beyond the walls of this building. What I love about working at the Winooski Memorial Library is never knowing who will come in next and what they are here for: is it someone looking to print off a resume, work on learning a language, or play with their children before naptime? The possibilities are really endless.
What challenges do you face?
Being a public service with a small staff can be a challenge of making sure we have adequate staff to keep this a safe space so that no one is ever alone with a patron or with a child.
Obviously, it’s a very small space and so sometimes a challenge is that, y’know, these kids are doing normal kid things. We have to constantly remind them ‘We want you to have fun in this space, but you just need to be more mindful of how loud you’re talking because someone five feet away from you is studying.” We hope to be able to expand into a larger space.
There have been some visibility issues. The city’s working to update signage because right now signs in the city point the library toward its old location, which hasn’t been there for, like, 15 years. So sometimes that can be a barrier.
Some folks just forget that libraries even exist. I’ve had calls before that people are like, ‘I just moved here. What do I have to pay to get a library card?’ And it’s like, ‘No, we’re a free service.’ I think some folks just don’t know that this is a thing that’s available to them and what they can do here. We have free Wi-Fi and this is a place you can come and charge your phone.
What kind of impact do you feel the library is making on the community?
There is a lot of educational opportunities and community building that happens in this space that I think is really special. It’s a space for people to access free resources, find out information. They can come to us and find out information of what is the next step for them in the community and where the answer is for them.
In my programming, I try to ensure that I’m always trying to build out our collection to reflect the kids in our community so that they’re seeing themselves or their classmates in the books that they read.
These kids are looking at books right now and they never look at books. I just recently bought some books about basketball players and I know they’re gonna be really excited about it.
What kind of demographic do you attract to the library?
Winooski is a very diverse community and Chittenden County, over the years, has had a number of resettled refugee groups. Winooski, like Burlington, has similar, more diverse demographics than other parts of the state. It helps that we’re in a position, in a part of town, that is very walkable and accessible. Some of these kids live less than a block away. Y’know, a Nepali grandfather in here with his grandson, playing cards.
Inherently we want to meet the needs of our community so that’s why we offer some adult programming tailored toward the refugee community. Adults who are looking to learn computer skills or improve their English and things like that.
Why is programming important to the community?
I think there are a lot of barriers for folks. I think the fact that someone can go and learn something new, learn about something at the library for free is huge. Programming can be an additional support for folks for access to things that they might otherwise have barriers to.
It’s really something that we’re all contributing to as a community. You should feel a sense of ownership over this space because it’s yours and ours and we work together to maintain it.
Nattilie Sanso is a Media Studies, Journalism & Digital Arts sophomore at Saint Michael’s College