News & Updates

During these uncertain times, we look for information and leadership that we can trust. At the library, we use the following resources to keep up with this quickly developing situation.

Vermont Department of Health novel coronavirus website

Center for Disease Control site

CDC videos with information about the virus and how to protect yourself.

World Health Organization novel coronavirus site

Comics for Good – weekly comics on COVID 19, coloring pages

Psych Central – How to Cope with Coronavirus Fears

How Can I Help #prepare – Vermont based facebook group.

Students of Sign Language 1 at Orwell Free Library can’t keep their hands quiet! Children from grades 3-5 participated in activities learning the ASL alphabet and numbers, as well as, signs for colors, people, foods and animals. They are learning to put together short sentences and are excited to show off their skills.

Sign Language 2 begins soon. Our experienced signers will take their learning to the next level over the six week course.

Retired speech therapist and library volunteer extraordinaire, Cindy Werner, provides this wonderful opportunity for our local children.

Check out what we’ve been up to this fall. It’s been busy and exciting with programs and events for all ages of Orwellians.

Susan Powers and George Macedo filled our gallery walls with a wonderful exhibit of their art. Howard Coffin tested the limits of our renovated space, bringing in 63 people to his lecture on Vermont Sharpshooters. Miss Cindy taught our youngest set colors in sign language using perfectly ripe, local apples. Cliff Hunter pressed cider with his home built press – and gave us all a sweet treat to take home. Later that same night, tweens and teens decended on our space for Nailed It! Library Edition and made a huge mess (wonderfully enough, those young participants had a huge hand in cleaning it all up!) In October we had our annual Harvest Sale, raising $1800 for the library. A handful of readers connected over lunch at our Books for Lunch discussion featuring Hillbilly Elegy. Cheryl Tudhope brought her rug hooking to the Friday afternoon fiber meetup. Susan Powers demonstrated painting with oil (and 5 year olds) in late October. We rounded things off with a teen Halloween Party that was as crazy as we expected.

We are lucky to be located in a community who speaks up, shows up and steps up when necessary!

Now it is time to begin scheduling events for those deep winter months when many of us need a little community pick me up. Got any ideas? Email OFL at OrwellFreeLibrary@gmail.com.

Our summer of space programming has been a blast! With one week left to go, our participants (ages 0-12) learned about our solar system, the stars, constellations, the sun, planets, and the moon. Learning about UV rays bombarding our astronauts will round out our events for school age children. The story time crowd will learn what an astronaut is and why they have such an interesting job.

We had 50 people sign up for our summer reading incentive programs, including Rubber Ducky Club for 0-5 year olds, Read for Beads Club for 5-12 year olds and our Reading Raffle for teens and adults. There has been loads of reading and plenty of fun at OFL this July!

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We had lots of fun at the stuffed animal sleepover!  Here are some photos our stuffy sitters took during the night.

 

 

 

 

Access a large and growing library of eBooks and audiobooks anytime, anywhere (with an internet connection).  Search, reserve, request and check out books using your OFL barcode, for free.

Use the help link at the Listen Up! Vermont website to get started.  Call or stop by the library if you need more assistance.

We now offer movies and documentaries through the streaming service Kanopy.  Sign up at http://orwellfreelibrary.kanopy.com/.  You will need your library card number to begin.

Library patrons have 6 credits (1 credit per film viewed) each month.  For more information or help using the service, please contact the librarian.

Find out how to use kanopy with a phone or tablet device or on your computer with this print out.  Kanopy is also available through Roku, Chomecast and Amazon Fire Sticks and Telstra TV.  The help section of the kanopy website is also useful when learning the program.

 

Interested in volunteering?

We only have two part time paid staff so we rely on volunteers to handle a host of other tasks that must be done to keep the Library open and functioning smoothly.

Current Need: Crafts for kids!  We would like to start a Saturday drop-in craft for families who stop by the library.  We need someone willing to help come up with crafts and prepare the projects.  This volunteer work can be done from home!

Volunteers get to know the community in a way few people do.  And best of all, you’ll be surrounded by books! All you need is a few hours a month (or more) to devote to library work, a pleasant manner and a willingness to help your neighbors check out a book, use the Library’s resources, or conduct research. We’ll teach you the rest.

Here are some of the jobs that volunteers do for us.

• Assist with the Summer Reading Program
• Staffing the Library when staff are out
• Maintaining the shelves (reading and straightening)
• Assisting with publicity
• Helping with mailings
• Repairing books, audiobooks, or DVDs
• Shelf reading (assuring the collection is shelved properly)
• Helping with book sales

Stop by or call if you’d like to learn more.