The Alpena County Library Launches New Clubs and Programs
The Alpena County Library, officially launched a lot of new clubs and programs for this upcoming year the Interim Director for the library, Jessica Luther said, “yeah so we’ve been you know with being closed because of a renovation and COVID, with reopening trying to find a schedule that works for everybody and what programs you know are popular and what the community wants. Our youth services department, and our adult services department have been working to find things that really speak to the community.” She said, “We’ve really amped up our youth services department in the past couple years, but our new head of youth services Sarah Kahuski she’s reaching out to the schools she works for the home school alliance and A.M.A.E.S.D. In the great start collaborative, we have programs pretty much every day of the week now.”
A lot of the clubs offered for adults are considered by most hobbies, but they give people the chance to meet and interact with others who enjoy the same things. Tina Markowski, the Head of Public Services, said, “We are doing recurring clubs, we have cinema classics, which occurs the first Wednesday of every month. We have an anime club once a month, we also have puzzle swap last Saturday of every month until April, so people can come in and swap puzzles or do puzzles.” She said, “Then we have our adult book club, which our theme is books to movies. So the third Monday of every month will be our book club discussion, and on the fourth Monday we’ll be playing the movie that’s based on the book.”
The programs the library offers give those in the surrounding area the chance to learn with computer classes, the ability to use 3–D printers, or the Cricut Machine for things like making t–shirts. The main purpose is to give people more opportunities and expand their horizons. Luther said, “Yah, so that’s part of a lot of what we do, and you know what you really try to focus on because we are in such an isolated region, and also the level of poverty and access.” She said, “You know, we try to do our utmost to provide access to opportunities that they would otherwise have no chance to experience, and you know that’s why a lot of our programming, 99.9% of our programming is free to the public.”
