T
he new year brings a celebration of the old and a welcoming of the new to the Brown County Public Library. The library will celebrate its 100th birthday this summer, and plans are under way to mark the anniversary in conjunction with the annual ice cream social in July. But before that happens, new programs and equipment will be in place early in 2019. One of those programs features “express library bags,” or “mystery bags,” as the staff refers to it. The bags are closed and tagged, and each has a theme for the adventurous reader. Most bags have three items in them. It could be a book, an audio book, a DVD, a music CD or some combination of those. Staff members have chosen a theme and filled the bag, which can be checked out as one unit for a period of three weeks. Tags on the bags identify a general topic, such as “Nineteenth Century Arctic Explorer,” the “Victorian Era,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Books about Books” or “Fairy Tales.” The library staff encourages patrons not to peek inside, but to take a chance on the selections, and expand on a topic in which a patron has an interest, or explore something new. In a sense, it replaces recommendations librarians sometimes give people who are unsure about what they want to read. Librarian Stori Snyder gave an example by opening one of her choices, “Women of the Civil War.” Contents include an audio book, “Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen” by Sarah Bird and the novel “Varina” by Charles Frazier, author of “Cold Mountain.” “You can start by not knowing what you want to read, or by totally knowing,” Snyder said.
16 Our Brown County • Jan./Feb. 2019
A New Year for the
Brown County Public Library ~story and photos by Bob Gustin
Librarian Stori Snyder with one of the “mystery bags.”
