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New Strategic Plan On February 24, 2026, the Board of Trustees approved the 2026-28 Strategic Plan. The process started in June 2025 with Fast Forward Libraries. Their team conducted an online survey, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews with community leaders, all of which is shared in the Learning Report. From there, they held workshops with staff and with the Board of Trustees. After several months of input and review, the plan was approved, which includes our purpose statement: To empower our community to learn, connect, create, and grow through welcoming and inclusive spaces, diverse resources, and meaningful experiences. Now comes the fun part - planning activities to bring the plan to life and determining how to measure our success. The staff is looking forward to this next phase.
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Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts
by Rebecca Hall
This graphic novel brings to light for the first time the existence of enslaved black women warriors, whose stories can be traced by carefully scrutinizing historical records; and where the historical record goes silent, Wake reconstructs the likely past of two female rebels, Adono and Alele, on the slave ship The Unity ... [The book] offers ... insight into the struggle to survive whole as a black woman in today's America; it is a historiography that illuminates both the challenges and the necessity of uncovering the true stories of slavery; and it is an overdue reckoning with slavery in New York City where two of these armed revolts took place--
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On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good
by Elise Loehnen
We congratulate ourselves when we resist the donut in the office breakroom. We celebrate our restraint when we hold back from sending an email in anger. We feel virtuous when we wake up at dawn to get a jump on the day. We put others' needs ahead of our own and believe this makes us exemplary. In On Our Best Behavior, journalist Elise Loehnen explains that these impulses - often lauded as unselfish, distinctly feminine instincts - are actually ingrained in us by a culture that reaps the benefits, via an extraordinarily effective collection of mores known as the Seven Deadly Sins. Since being codified by the Christian church in the fourth century, the Seven Deadly Sins-pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth-have exerted insidious power. Even today, in our largely secular, patriarchal society, they continue to circumscribe women's behavior. For example, seeing sloth as sinful leads women to deny themselves rest; a fear of gluttony drives them to ignore their appetites; and an aversion to greed prevents them from negotiating for themselves and contributes to the 55 percent gender wealth gap--
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Michigan's Literacy Rate and Libraries
by Sandy Irwin, Library Director Governor Whitmer shared that Michigan ranks 44th in 4th grade literacy across the U.S. It is a disappointing statistic, but we can turn it around. The key is reading to young children regularly, as well as putting down the phones and stepping away from the screens (unless you are reading eBooks!). As a subscriber to this newsletter, you are probably already a reader. Here are some steps you can take to help others turn it around or to get them started. - Make sure the children in your life have access to books and that they are in their home.
- For those who cannot read - read to them. 15-20 minutes a day makes all the difference in the world.
- Model reading. If youth see you reading, they may want to read too.
- Talk about why you like to read.
- Don't force certain books on youth. Let them find something that is of interest to them. Talk to our youth librarians - they can help!
- Encourage others to develop their own library habit by bringing them by.
As a librarian, it has always been satisfying to put the right book in a person's hands at the right time. Our team is ready to help people of all ages learn to love reading! |
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