School year programing underway at the Hays Public Library

School year programming is underway at the Hays Public Library as they continue to develop their technological resources. Communications Coordinator, Callie Kolacny stops by to share the details on this episode of the Post Podcast.

Transcript:

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Callie Kolacny 

We always have good entertainment going on in some form or another. But I want to mention first, our foundation fundraisers coming up this Saturday. We've been talking about it for a couple of months now, but it's actually coming up this Saturday 630 to around nine tickets are still available, but not very many, we are almost at our max limit for our tickets. So if you still want tickets, you need to go ahead and either go to the library to purchase them or go online to Hayes library.org. And you'll see the little scrolling thing and click on the fundraiser and you can buy your tickets there they cost $30 apiece, we have had to have a change with our keynote speaker Marcy Penner from the Kansas sampler foundation. Excuse me, he was going to be here. But she for some unforeseen circumstances is not able to but we were very lucky to get Bob Dixon Bob Dixon was the mayor of Greensburg, after the tornado wiped out the town. And he's the one that helped really spurred the reclamation of of Greensburg and so I think he'll have a really interesting talk. And some I've had some friends that have seen him before. And it's we're very lucky to have been able to get him on such short notice.

 

James Bell 

That's incredible. Yes, I've actually had the opportunity to myself to hear him speak and not not recently, I think it's been a number of years ago. But yeah, real interesting story and, and the work they had to do to put that town back together. It's just, it's incredible the planning and the forethought, but then also the work that has started to go behind it.

 

Callie Kolacny 

Yeah, the direction that they took it into with being very sustainable. It's just really interesting. So we're excited. To have Bob Dixon come, we have will have a raffle a little bit of a silent auction. We've had some great sponsors and donations from a lot of wonderful people around the town. And so we're very excited. Yeah, it's gonna be fun night.

 

James Bell 

Very cool. You know, I wonder real quickly before we talked about some of these other events, if you want to talk to us about why is the foundation so important to the library?

 

Callie Kolacny 

Sure. The foundation is the fundraising arm of the library. So when we get donations and things and that goes through the foundation, it can be out anything from if somebody wants to, you know, give us $50, or write a check for any amount of money or some end of life planning types of things and trusts and stuff like that, that can all go through the foundation. We also have an account with the Heartland Community Foundation, so you can make donations to the his Public Library Foundation through them as well. And then that money goes back into the library for mainly non budgeted items, things, things that come up that we need at the library, but it wasn't something that was specifically planned for or budgeted necessarily. One of the things we've been wanting to do that we wanted to do was the bookmobile. Well, the foundation paid for half of the bookmobile the other half with thingies, Hanson Foundation. And so, our phone Foundation was able to without that money we would not have been able to have the bookmobile they also paid for and this was a budgeted item. But yet they were able to put money into the most recent renovation. And that was able to fund some of the you know, as you're doing a renovation, little things come up or you think, Oh, if we only had a little bit more money, we can make that a little bit better. Well, those kinds of donations from the foundation and from the Friends of the public library, those helped to get those things that were maybe just a little bit nicer, a little bit more fitting with what we needed at the library so that they're the ones that are doing things like that, by raising that money. And because they've spent so much money in the last couple of years on those big projects, we kind of need to refill those coffers. So that's a little bit about what the foundation fundraiser is about, but also just raise awareness that it does exist and why it's important to the library, because they can make all of those donations. Very cool. Sure.

 

James Bell 

It's gonna be a great time.

 

Callie Kolacny 

It'll be so much fun. Come on out, have some cheese and wine and little mini cheesecakes and lots of great conversation. Listen to Bob Dixon, maybe come away with some fun raffle prizes or something. It's yeah, it's gonna be a great time. Absolutely.

 

James Bell 

Very cool. All right. Well, we got to move on because we got to talk about all these cool events. And this one, I'm curious what this is hummingbirds in Kansas. This is actually starting here in Boston.

 

Callie Kolacny 

Yeah, this is today at 10 o'clock. And it's kind of a late addition. But we're going to have a man there to talk about the hummingbirds and their migration and habitats and how you can maybe attract them and when they would be in Kansas, so if you're curious about that, come on down to the library this morning at 10 o'clock. Also today we have our making sense of series continues, it's making sense of gardening, we'll talk more about seed saving. That'll be today at 530 this evening. Tomorrow, we have another program that we're just lucky to be able to get bicycling with monarchs. So the monarch butterflies, Sarah Dykeman, rode her bicycle over 10,000 miles, and followed the migration of the monarch butterflies through three countries. And she wrote a book on it. And she just happens to be passing through town right this week, and was able to stop by tomorrow at 530 and to talk about her experience, and she'll do a book signings. So if your sounds fascinating to me, I will definitely be there to hear about this. So that's tomorrow at 530, we are bringing back the cookbook club. So we'll take a couple different cookbooks each month and you can look through a make a recipe and come and share with the group that'll be on the third Thursdays at 11am. We've got a program on Saturday this will be before the foundation fundraiser, You've Got Mail, we're exploring letter writing through history. That'll be Saturday at 11am as part of our world language club, which is a new monthly program on the third Thursdays. We're gonna have Harry Potter night family night, we always do this every year. It's a lot of fun. This will be on September 29, at five o'clock, five, five to seven. So if you're a Harry Potter family, come on out and share Harry Potter family nights and then Oktoberfest at the library. We do our own Oktoberfest with a hot shots poker ban on the week, week and before the other Oktoberfest so that'll be on October 1 from 10am to 1pm.

 

James Bell 

Very cool King enough poker? Oh, of course. Always good time. Like

 

Callie Kolacny 

we're gonna have beer rocks. Yeah. Looks better than that. Yeah, sure. Cool.

 

James Bell 

Very cool. All right. Well, I'm wondering about this the 100 books before high school 100 books before graduation. We talked I think very briefly about that last time, is that still going on?

 

Callie Kolacny 

Well, this is a new thing, actually. Because we always we've been doing 1000 Books Before Kindergarten, that's been going on for quite a while. So now we're expanding it and trying to get the teenagers involved. So we're doing 100 books before high school. So that's for the middle school aged kids. And then 100 books before graduation for the high schoolers, you can register through Beanstack. So again, we're doing being stack, registering keep track of all of your books, and and win some prizes along the way. And just really trying to get you know, more than more interested in reading it can that can be a difficult age for them to be interested in it. So it's just a fun thing for us to do to try to try to spur them along.

 

James Bell 

Yeah, absolutely. And while you're on your phone, download that Beanstack app if you don't have it, which is cool. Great. And you also use that frog to summer events. Reading stuff. Yeah. What's what you got a library I'm

 

Callie Kolacny 

so excited about this. My we have a haze Public Library app, what you do is go to your app store, whether it's, you know, whichever kind of phone you've got, and download my Libra myl I BRL, Miley bro, and then search for Hayes Public Library. When you find that, then you'll put in your library card number and your PIN number. The pin number is your last four digits of your library card number. That's important I learned. Very important, you got to have that the last four digits of your library card numbers, your pin number. And through this app, you can then manage all of your library cards, say your family each you and your kids, they all have a different library card, you can put them all on the app. And it's so you can manage your all of your library card accounts. You can access the digital resources. If you like to read books through or listen to books through Libby, it's right there. You don't even need the Libby app anymore. If you like to use hoopla you still need the hoopla app. But if you find the book that you want, it'll take you directly to the hoopla app. You can also of course, search the library catalog you can place holds, you can place il l request. There's a digital barcode on there so that you can use in the building on the kiosk so that you don't need your physical library card necessarily. So if you happen to leave it in the car, and but you've got your phone, then you're good to go. It's it's it's a lot of it's great. I mean, it has everything that you could want pretty much for the library and you can access the library website, the event calendar, all of that through the app.

 

James Bell 

I love that. And you know, I really like you guys are always so you're so tech forward and connecting all these things and hoopla and especially hoopla I love hoopla get in there all the time. But the digital resources and then to tie it all together into this like very cool and it's not intimidating at all. And if you do run into problems like like I did, you just contact the library. It's so super helpful. I don't remember the young woman's name that helped me out a couple of weeks ago but um, and she was great and very patient and I just felt like a fool because I couldn't make this work. And she's like, Oh, you just do this and this and this, but it was perfect.

 

Callie Kolacny 

Well good. I'm very glad to hear that. But yeah, if you aren't sure how to download any of the the app or anything else hoopla things like come to the library, we would be so happy to help you. I helped a guy download the hoopla app the other day because he wanted to listen to the Hobbit. And that was the device that it was on. And so we downloaded it. He was good to go. It took very little, not even five minutes to get it done. And, yeah, when we want to help, we want you to have all access to all of these wonderful things that we have at the library.

 

James Bell 

Absolutely. Now, there's one last thing we got, we got to talk about before we go this is early active reading, what is this about this is this kicked off already?

 

Callie Kolacny 

Yes, it started in September. And it's a new program. And it's on Friday mornings at 11am. It's really for three to five year olds and kind of early elementary that aren't in school. And it's exercise the body and the mind. The other day, they were exploring the letter S and had big S's in tape on the floor. And they were using like little toy cars to trace the shape of the s things like that. So it does some physical movement, along with trying to work that into to the mind as they learn how to read and they learn their letters and things like that. So it's just it's a new program there. I also want to mention really quick tutoring, we do have our tutoring is back with the support, hey, students, and they're there and they're ready to help us generally from three to six. On Wednesdays, there's somebody there's that's at two o'clock. So if you want to bring somebody early than two to six, but they're great, they can really help with I mean, even even math, I mean, how many parents understand today's math.

 

James Bell 

I don't, I can't help we had we had to hire a tutor because I can help my kids with

 

Callie Kolacny 

math and you can get free after school tutoring at the library. If you want more information on it or to make an appointment, go to Hayes library.org/tutoring to go ahead and get on there to make sure that you've got to set aside time. But they also will do Watkins if they're not already busy, and they're upstairs on the second floor. All right.

 

James Bell 

I love that. And what a cool program and such as such an asset to the community. You guys provide that for free. That's very cool.

 

Callie Kolacny 

Yeah, we want to be able to make sure that we can help those kids in whatever the way they need.

 

James Bell 

Awesome. Kelly, before we go, how can they find out more information?

 

Callie Kolacny 

Sure, go to our website, as I've mentioned a couple times Hayes library.org You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We're also on tick tock now. Tick tock or give us a call 6259014