With funding from the American Library Association’s Libraries Transforming Communities: Focus on Small and Rural Libraries grant, Greenwood Library hosted a summer of events for our year-long reading challenge, Southside Reads. Grant funds were used to bolster the reading challenge during the summer months of May, June, and July when our community tends to slow down with most university students leaving the area. Southside Reads challenges participants to read a book matching a specific theme for each month of the year. For the summer months our themes were: the environment, healthy habits, and community. An integral part of the grant is supporting community conversations, and each month we held a conversation over Zoom to discuss the books read and how they related to readers’ lives and community. Our main goal was to create a place for readers to connect regardless of their affiliations, adding to college-town vibrancy, a priority in Longwood University’s strategic plan.
For May’s environmental theme, we not only challenged readers to find a book, but also to get out into nature to take pictures. Grant funds supported a Zoom photography class with Longwood professor, Alec Hosterman, and prizes for a photo contest. Photos could fall into two broad categories: the natural world or the Southside experience. Highlighting animals, plants, interesting landscapes, and what makes our county unique, contest participants submitted beautiful photographs that were judged by Dr. Hosterman and the co-chairs of the Southside Reads organizing committee. Three winners were selected:
For June’s healthy habits theme, we partnered with a local salon for a program. Free chair massages, complimentary access to an oxygen bar, and a tour of their facilities spotlighted their health-related services. We also partnered with the Southside Virginia Family YMCA to offer yoga in the library, but due to scheduling delays that event was not held until July. To compliment these events, we purchased gift cards to a local pottery store as a giveaway for June participants.
For July’s community theme, we partnered with our local civil rights museum, the Robert R. Moton museum for a community conversation using the town’s local history to inspire participants. Using our local story of the 1951 student strike for education equality, we discussed our ideal community and how we can be change makers, just like Barbara Johns and her schoolmates. Grant funds were used to host an ice cream social for community members and to increase participation we advertised in the local paper. The Moton discussion was our largest of the summer with 17 participants, 11 of whom had not attended any Southside Reads events before.
At the end of the summer, we distributed a survey to participants in the Southside Reads challenge. Respondents shared that Southside Reads had them thinking more about their community and making connections with others during a difficult time. One person commented, “I was able to connect during the pandemic and the club helped my isolated mother to connect with other readers.” Each month we gather on Zoom to discuss that month’s theme and the books we’ve read. Participants share personal stories tied to the theme and share insights gained from their reading. We’ve developed what one survey respondent called “a community of readers.”
Libraries Transforming Communities: Focus on Small and Rural Libraries is an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA) in collaboration with the Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL).
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