Children’s Librarian Rose Kohler Speaks About Summer Reading Club

By GENE ESPY
Editor
Rose Kohler, Children’s Librarian at the Chattooga County Library, spoke on the Summer Reading Club and the number of books and films circulated through the library, the Summer Reading Program and things that are new at the facility.
Mrs. Kohler spoke about the new Seed Library and it is located in the front part of the library.
“It is a filing cabinet, but it is actually for seeds,” she said. Flyers are located there on top that tells you how to prepare your seeds – put them in the little envelopes, you fill the information out – what seed it is, what year it is from and other information and then you file it in the appropriate section of the filing cabinet.”
There could be flowers, herbs, and other types of seeds. If you would like to take seeds, you go through and find what you want, take the seeds out, plant them and in the fall, we ask that you follow the proper procedure and return part of those seeds back to the library so other people can use them.
All the programming that the library does depends on grants and donations.
“There are no state funds anymore for programming,” Mrs. Kohler said. “Very, very little state funds are available for our collection of books.”
They have cut and cut and a few years the library got no money from the state for new books of any kind. She said that she thought that the library now only gets 20 cents per capita for books.
“Mrs. Susan Stephens, our library director, is excellent in finding books for good prices and keeping our collection up to date,” she added.
She said that all types of older and newer movies are available to check out at the library. She said that was a big component of what they do.
“For the last quarter – October, November and December – we circulated 16,868 movies,” she continued.
There are 12 computers that are available for the community to use. A lot of the usage right now is filing income taxes. A number of people come in and put work applications in on the computers, do DFCS updates and a lot of other things they can do on the computer.
“The computers are used, used, used, believe me,” Mrs. Kohler said. “In the last three-month period, our computers were used 2,969 times and that is just the number, not the amount of time they are used.”
Some of the programming the library does on a regular basis is Storytime every Thursday. They read three books, they do a craft that pertains to the books somehow and then they exercise.
“We usually read two books and then we have to get them to shake everything just so we can listen to another book and then we do our colors and have a different color for each month. We sing the days of the week and the months of the year. We have a different shape for every month and a different number for each month.”
She said that usually for the readings they had three to five kids that used to come. Last Thursday they had 24 that came.
Also, on Thursdays they have a homeschool group that comes to the library. They have their lessons and then do something related to the lesson. In September, they would have 10 to 12 in that group to begin with. Yesterday (Feb.28) they had 41.
“There were a lot of kids that day,” Mrs. Kohler added.
She said that the library has had its Story Boards at Menlo, Trion and James H. “Sloppy” Floyd Lake. The next one will be in Summerville. They stay at a different location for about a month.
The signs are set up around walking tracks with parts of a complete story on different boards. A person can walk around the track and read the complete story.
Stories that have been used are “Stella Luna,” “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and others and they all have had really nice reviews, according to Mrs. Kohler.
“A lot of work is put into that Story Walk and Shelly Baker takes care of that project,” she said.
The project was made possible by a grant from the Tillotson-Menlo Charitable Foundation.
The Summer Reading Program is coming up at the library. The kickoff in Trion will be May 31. And in Summerville on June 1.
“We will have a big day of sign-ups for the Summer Reading Program with games, prizes and face painting and this year the theme is “A Universe Of Stories.” It will be all things on space travel,” she explained.
Planned in June are the kick-offs, Tae-Kwon-Do demonstration, Science Tellers who will come and do science projects related to whatever the theme that is being used so it will be universal stories. They plan a Zoo To You which is coming out of Dahlonega this year and they are going to bring animals that have been in space – monkey, iguana, large roach and others.
The week of June 17-21 there will be a STEM Camp and projects will be done all day long. The Star Lab is planned for June 28 and it will be a large tent in the Teen area of the library. You go inside and they have all the constellations displayed and they do a program with that. They can accommodate 25 people at a time inside the Star Lab. A McDonald’s Magic Show is also planned as well as a ventriloquist show in the first part of July.
“A lot of good activities involved around summer reading are planned this year,” Mrs. Kohler said.
Another thing that is planned is a T-shirt given to those that exceed their summer reading assignment.
“They sign up with a reading log and read any book they like to read and then they log in three hours, six hours, or nine or 12 hours, whatever they read,” she added.
“We have been fortunate to get a lot of items donated for prizes,” Mrs. Kohler said.
The nine-hour prize is two tickets to the Rome Braves game.
All programming depends on donations at the library, she reiterated.