#authors for libraries

[quotiepieshel]

Libraries are the reason I'm a writer today. I spent hours after school at my local library, poring over books and doing research. About what? Anything I wanted! That was just the point. I knew that someday I wanted to see my books on those shelves.

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

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[nathankotecki]

THE BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP OF AUTHORS AND LIBRARIES

Authors and libraries. Writers and readers. How fortunate we are that libraries have soldiered through economic downturns and threats to the first amendment, and continue to be lighthouses of culture and literacy in even small communities.

United for Libraries (a division of the American Library Association) has just announced Authors for Libraries, a website where libraries can find out about authors and their works, and potentially forge partnerships in any number of ways. This is exciting, particularly for libraries in areas that don’t have a lot of local authors.

I happen to live in a thriving community of local authors - the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill (and hey, let’s get Hillsborough and Pittsboro in on this party) triangle is crawling with great writers in a broad spectrum of genres. Librarians in this area only have to walk out their front door and toss a (hopefully soft) rock to hit an author. But that doesn’t mean the relationship between local authors and libraries is always self evident.

Today, inspired by the Authors for Libraries announcement, the Orange County Public Library in Hillsborough asked me via tweet, “What can we do to help?” I consider the OCPL a good friend; they kindly host the First Monday Classics discussion I moderate with fellow local author and this year’s Piedmont Laureate, James Maxey. But I am writing this post because I think there are so many amazing ways libraries can not only help authors, but engage in a highly mutually beneficial relationship with us. This is already much longer than 140 characters, so, you can see why I’ve jumped social media channels. :)

Okay, OCPL, I’m speaking for myself here, because I realize authors set different parameters for what they’re interested and available to do, but I would suspect most of us would happily take your call. Here goes:

Invite us over. I would be thrilled to do an event with you. Yes, I could do a reading from my books, but I would also be happy to speak on any number of other topics, including the writing process, pros and cons of traditional versus self-publishing, my lifelong love affair with the Western Canon...

Expanding on that, how cool would it be to have a writer-in-residence program? Invite an author to spend a period of time working in the library, perhaps in conjunction with one or two public events, and write a short piece that becomes part of the library’s collection. In ten or fifteen years, you could even publish an anthology of the stories.

Get us to teach. One of my favorite things to do is to go into schools and libraries and conduct creative writing workshops with writers of all ages. I’ve done this a at least two dozen schools and libraries around the state, and I know a good number of authors who do similar workshops. Libraries pull together amazing summer programming every year; why not get an author or two in there to do a workshop?

Use us a curators. How cool would it be to invite local authors to provide an annotated list of their favorite books, and then use that for a display/bulletin board/web page?

Let us help fundraise. The Orange County Historical Museum does a brilliant event each year in which they invite local authors to tell stories. They sell tickets and collect thousands of dollars toward their annual budget. That seems like a no-brainer for a library.

I’m sure the moment I publish this post, I’m going to think of even more ideas. But I hope you’ve noticed that while all of these suggestions definitely help me - which was your question to begin with - they also help you. And that is as it should be, because authors and libraries. Writers and readers. At any rate, thanks for asking! See you at the next First Monday Classics discussion!