History Begins With You

Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will one day ask how we responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. They will look for letters, diaries, photographs, posters and other items that shed light on how the pandemic affected our lives. That's why we're asking our community members to contribute to the historical record today! Are you keeping a family journal with your kids?  Are you taking photos of your family members wearing their masks or community members coming together to help each other?  We want to see them!  

You can submit all forms of media such as stories, photographs, music, poems, artwork, and so much more, and we're encouraging kids, teens, and adults to participate. And as an extra incentive, we'll enter you into a drawing for an Amazon gift card for every entry you submit.  Visit our website to start sharing your memories today!

Have you been going through old family photos lately or talking to your grandparents more and wished there was a way to preserve those stories for others to enjoy? We want to hear about that, too! Contact us to talk more about our oral history and family history projects.  You can see all of the other photos and oral histories we've collected at our Adams County Community Archive.

Maybe you're doing your own family history research or want to preserve your family photos yourself. Check out the Library Minute videos on our YouTube channel to learn about Google PhotosScan and how to navigate the General Land Office website.  We also have some great genealogical and local history resources on our website.

As always, we're happy to answer any local history and genealogy questions!  Staff are still working from home so send us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

~Kylie Fullmer on behalf of Morgane Plager Roth, Local History Library Assistant

Summer Plans Are In Full Swing!

Programming at the library is going to be different for some time and our Summer Reading Club "Imagine Your Story" is no exception.  Long before the quarantine, we scheduled Cecil the Magician to put on a show for us at the park on July 6th to kick off our summer of activities.  While we're still hoping to continue with those plans, it will probably look very different than in previous years.  For example, we might not have a local lawyer riding around on the shoulders of our performer like last summer 😊

Our regular summer programming for kids and teens will probably look a lot different as well.  Instead of having weekly activities at the library and paper reading logs, we'll be offering our patrons an online portal to keep track of their reading throughout the summer and a chance to collect online badges for completing fun challenges!   Of course we can't predict what our world will look like even a month from now, but we're hoping to celebrate all of our summer readers with a "Knights in Training" party (complete with jousting!) later this summer.  Details about how to sign up for the online Summer Reading Club portal will be coming in June.

Adults, we didn't forget about you!  You'll have access to our online summer reading portal to track your books and activities as well.  And one of the activities I'm excited to announce that we'll be doing again this year is our annual Summer Author Series.  It’s hard to believe that this is our 7th year!   We're still working on our summer line-up so stay tuned for details, including how to join us from home if we can't meet in person.

Thanks to input from many of our patrons, I also applied to host three speakers from the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau this summer and fall.  I always appreciate the scope, diversity and wide range of topics offered, and this year will be no different.  Again, because of these uncertain times, dates and times are subject to change but this is our current schedule:

• Who Was Chief Seattle? with David Buerge on July 27 at 6pm
• Heating Up: The Ethics of Climate Change with Brian C Henning on August 31 at 6pm
• Marijuana: Evil Weed or Medical Miracle? with Rebecca Craft on October 3rd at 11am

To all of you, I hope you and your families are safe and well.  I look forward to seeing all of you, our patrons, visiting the library again!

Heidi Harting, Library Asssitant