Trick or Treat for a Book

sBOOKy szn

PALMER — The Friends of Palmer Public Library will be hosting a book sale during the week leading up to Halloween. Students who have Thursday, Oct. 31 and that following Friday off from school in the Mat-Su Borough School District can also trick or treat for a book at the Palmer Public Library on Halloween.

“There will be children running all over all day on Halloween so if a kid comes into our book sale they can trick or treat and it’s all free,” said PPL services coordinator Katie Schweisthal.

Schweisthal says that the Palmer Public Library has had to rely more heavily on help with funding from the Friends of Palmer Public Library group. Only seven libraries operate within the Mat-Su Borough. The borough had an agreement to help fund public libraries in the cities of Palmer and Wasilla in exchange for serving a greater area of patrons. Due to budget shortfalls, the borough backed out on their agreement to help fund local libraries. With an array of events and services offered at the public library beyond just the thousands of pages of hard copy books, Schweisthal hopes that PPL can continue to serve readers with help from an active Friends of the PPL group.

“It’s always a bit of a fright and it’s tough trying to figure out how to stretch a budget,” Schweisthal said.

With the advances in technology and advent of streaming services that now dominate how consumers access their content, public libraries have slightly shifted to offer more options to a wider variety of library goers. Schweisthal sees community members for movie nights for both adults and teens. The PPL offers summer programming for students that featured presentations in agriculture and search and rescue over the past summer. Schweisthal has also found that the PPL has success with programming for students during breaks from school, offering fly tying programs and reptiles from Jonathan’s Reptiles. For younger students, story time remains a favorite. Schweisthal says that PPL offers a more traditional story time for kids without using electronics.

“What we try to do is plant a seed with the kids that visiting the library is fun. So the kids are moving, they’re wiggling, they’re climbing in my lap, they’re fighting but we party on, we read and we celebrate,”Schweisthal said.

Schweisthal says that many families visit the PPL to interact with other people, not just books. While it may turn some library goers off, Schweisthal welcomes what she calls “happy noise.”

As more books are turned into movies and those movies make it to the library, Schweisthal has to keep up a high demand for DVD checkouts. While many urban libraries are moving away from maintaining hard copies of movies, more rural areas still hold on to DVD and even VHS tapes, depending on how far away from the road system the library is.

“Big Little Lies was turned into a series so that went hot again. It was a popular book club read but now that it’s hitting streaming services it’s hot again, anything that says Harry potter on it, it doesn’t matter if it’s a play or a spin off, that’s hot,” Schweisthal said.

The PPL serves an enormous area of readers. While 3,264 of PPL’s patrons reside within the city limits of Palmer, 11,095 of them do not. Servicing 110,732 visitors in 2018, the 14,359 total members of PPL borrowed 117,808 books. While books are still the main attraction at PPL, readers also downloaded 20,844 eBooks in 2018.